Waiting for image browser...

[JC Blanchard]

I know this issue has been brought up before in this forum, but for me it's a very important issue and that's why I am creating this new post.

I am professional photographer, designer, and experienced Adobe software user and teacher (since Photoshop 5). Adobe products have worked fine for me for most of my career, but now, like many others, I find them bloated, slow and overpriced. They have many, many functionalities I never use, and probably never will use, but I still have to pay for, while they're slowing down my work, making my workflow more complex. I spend more and more time on web forums and tutorials looking for solutions or figuring out tools, time I could spend doing my job and creating. 

I recently bought Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer and I was amazed at how user friendly, well designed and powerful these apps are. I'm still using everyday (and paying-renting) the full Adobe Suite. Why? I can't really make the switch if I don't have an alternative file browser like Adobe Bridge. Not Lightroom. Lightroom is great and I can and will RENT it separately. But Lightroom shows me only photos, not EPS, Illustrator or any other type of images. I have thousands of images, bitmap and vectors, and I need a browser to navigate, view and locate all my images quickly and efficiently. I tried to find an alternative to Bridge, but there doesn't seem to be any that meets my needs (any suggestions welcome). It's not that I like Bridge! It's slow and unstable. It crashes a few times a day. And I can only get it if I pay for a package at Adobe. But there is no alternative!

So my question is:

Does Affinity have any plans whatsoever to offer an image browser in the future?

It doesn't have to be a full DAM software with all the bells and whistles. I just need to view and locate my images. I don't need fancy sharing capabilities, cloud librairies and storage, backup wizardry. I don't need it to work on my phone or my tablet and have one touch magic. Just basic features to do my work:

• Speed
• Support for all (or most) image types
• Display basic metadata and keywording
• Basic organizing

Thank you for making great products! Can someone at Affinity provide a hint at what's coming (or not)?

[Snapseed]

Given the existing range of image viewers like Faststone, XnView and dozens of other similar viewers that already do a competent job, it probably isn't worth Serif Affinity trying to enter that already saturated market.

[JC Blanchard]

Seriously? Educated guess or inside knowledge?

Please read my post. I'm not looking for free and out of date software. 

[walt.farrell]

13 hours ago, JC Blanchard said:

Can someone at Affinity provide a hint at what's coming (or not)?

Probably they won't. They do not comment on future possibilities, usually.

[Old Bruce]

20 hours ago, JC Blanchard said:

• Display basic metadata and keywording

That is the only thing missing from my use of the Finder on Mac OS. I don't actually need to use the metadata and key words can be placed into the Info Window's comments box.

[Komatös]

Hello @JC Blanchard

If you work with MS Windows maybe the svg-explorer-extension is a part that makes your life easier.

[wonderings]

On 2/14/2022 at 5:09 PM, JC Blanchard said:

I know this issue has been brought up before in this forum, but for me it's a very important issue and that's why I am creating this new post.

I am professional photographer, designer, and experienced Adobe software user and teacher (since Photoshop 5). Adobe products have worked fine for me for most of my career, but now, like many others, I find them bloated, slow and overpriced. They have many, many functionalities I never use, and probably never will use, but I still have to pay for, while they're slowing down my work, making my workflow more complex. I spend more and more time on web forums and tutorials looking for solutions or figuring out tools, time I could spend doing my job and creating. 

I recently bought Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer and I was amazed at how user friendly, well designed and powerful these apps are. I'm still using everyday (and paying-renting) the full Adobe Suite. Why? I can't really make the switch if I don't have an alternative file browser like Adobe Bridge. Not Lightroom. Lightroom is great and I can and will RENT it separately. But Lightroom shows me only photos, not EPS, Illustrator or any other type of images. I have thousands of images, bitmap and vectors, and I need a browser to navigate, view and locate all my images quickly and efficiently. I tried to find an alternative to Bridge, but there doesn't seem to be any that meets my needs (any suggestions welcome). It's not that I like Bridge! It's slow and unstable. It crashes a few times a day. And I can only get it if I pay for a package at Adobe. But there is no alternative!

So my question is:

Does Affinity have any plans whatsoever to offer an image browser in the future?

It doesn't have to be a full DAM software with all the bells and whistles. I just need to view and locate my images. I don't need fancy sharing capabilities, cloud librairies and storage, backup wizardry. I don't need it to work on my phone or my tablet and have one touch magic. Just basic features to do my work:

• Speed
• Support for all (or most) image types
• Display basic metadata and keywording
• Basic organizing

Thank you for making great products! Can someone at Affinity provide a hint at what's coming (or not)?

I am curious what you use to run Adobe CC? I work with the big 3 Adobe apps every day, do it for a living and have no issues with speed or stability. I run tests with the 3 Affinity apps, but not something I use to replace Adobe, it was more curiosity at a real Adobe competitor with a very cheap price. I don't notice any major speed differences between the comparable apps for Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, at least with the basics of opening files and light editing. I am using a late 2014 5K iMac with i7 Quad core CPU, R9 GPU with 4 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of DDR3 ram all with a 1TB flash drive. 

[Cuando]

I currently work with Eagle and it simplifies me quite my tasks

[JC Blanchard]

Hi Wonderings,

Here is what I have. 

iMac Retina 5K, 27 inch, Late 2015
3.2 GHz Intel Core i5
32GB 1867MHz DDR3L (4x8GB) 1TB Fusion Drive
AMD Radeon R9 M390 2GB.

You’re one lucky guy if everything runs smoothly. The Adobe Support Community forum is full of requests for help. Illustrator and Indesign run fairly smoothly, but it’s another story for Photoshop and Bridge. Bridge crashed again a few minutes ago. Couldn’t handle a folder with 6000 images. 
Photoshop is stable, but sluggish. Since several updates ago, my lasso tool lags and stutters, making it very difficult to do precise work. I was hoping it would be solved in subsequent updates, but it hasn’t. Could be that the graphics card is not supported, according to Jeffrey Tranberry, Sr. Product Manager at Adobe.
I miss the good old days of CS6.

[JC Blanchard]

8 hours ago, Cuando said:

I currently work with Eagle and it simplifies me quite my tasks

Looks interesting! I will try that out. Thanks.