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Affinity should aquire Nik Viveza


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I wish Affinity would acquire the newly abandoned Nik Viveza from Google. This would be a great addition to Affinity Photo, and a fantastic Photos extension.

This is the number one feature I miss since moving to Affinity.

Here is a link describing and showing Viveza:

https://www.google.c...roducts/viveza/

 

YouTube links:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLp5lYDsQi4gkL89jbJYu8rvCK0fDwHABP&v=tuCi1k7S0Ig

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMYTYMLoeNA&index=5&list=PLp5lYDsQi4gkL89jbJYu8rvCK0fDwHABP&nohtml5=False
 

 

Here is the Google announcement of redirecting focus to smartphones.

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I just wish the plugin architecture within Affinity Photo was better implemented (unless it has improved since I last tried it). There are plenty of plug-ins out there that do the same thing as Nik, it is just that they do not work with Affinity Photo yet, which is why I am sticking with PS/LR at the moment.

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I wish Affinity would acquire the newly abandoned Nik Viveza from Google. This would be a great addition to Affinity Photo, and a fantastic Photos extension.

 

I have no background in business so perhaps I am completely wrong about this, but since Nik is now free I fail to see what income potential there would be in Serif acquiring it. It would, of course, probably make it much easier for APB to support the plugins, but I fail to see how this would much improve the Serif bottom line.

 

I would like to see it but I don't see why it would be good business investment.

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I have no background in business so perhaps I am completely wrong about this, but since Nik is now free I fail to see what income potential there would be in Serif acquiring it. It would, of course, probably make it much easier for APB to support the plugins, but I fail to see how this would much improve the Serif bottom line.

 

I would like to see it but I don't see why it would be good business investment.

Quite so. The plug-in will now whither on the vine with no ongoing development. IMO it is to be avoided at all costs - there are alternatives.

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I have no background in business so perhaps I am completely wrong about this, but since Nik is now free I fail to see what income potential there would be in Serif acquiring it. It would, of course, probably make it much easier for APB to support the plugins, but I fail to see how this would much improve the Serif bottom line.

 

I would like to see it but I don't see why it would be good business investment.

 

I would like Viveza functionality build into Affinity Photo.

 

Here are the reasons:

 

1.  The free Nik Viveza plugin doesn't work with Affinity Photo.  (I checked with Miguel this morning)

 

2.  Viveza provides a powerful, quick, easy way of manipulating photos.  Snapseed for iOS does nearly the same thing and is very popular with users.

 

3.  Viveza was a very popular Photoshop add-in until Google purchased it and did nothing to promote it.

 

4.  Viveza would make a great extension for Apple Photos.

 

5.  Viveze allows beginner users to do advanced photo improvement quickly and easily, giving Affinity Photo another advantage over Adobe etc.

 

6.  Google has decided to abandon the desktop and focus on smartphones.  Affinity is a desktop app and could benefit from Nik Technology.

 

7.  Affinity could additionally reconfigure the plugins as inexpensive Apple Photo extensions opening a new source of revenue for Affinity.

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Quite so. The plug-in will now whither on the vine with no ongoing development. IMO it is to be avoided at all costs - there are alternatives.

Since it is free I guess I don't see the reason for it to be "avoided at all costs". In fact the costs are zero, aside from the incidental "cost" of using disk space, and it seems reasonable for people to use it while they can. In the end, of course, it will fail when the OS changes in such a way that it will no longer function properly, but that is probably something like another 5 years and by that time there will be alternatives. I agree that it will wither on the vine, but it can provide decent functionality until it is gone.

 

I guess I see no particular reason to avoid taking advantage of decent software that is free. Just my opinion.

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Since it is free I guess I don't see the reason for it to be "avoided at all costs". In fact the costs are zero, aside from the incidental "cost" of using disk space, and it seems reasonable for people to use it while they can. In the end, of course, it will fail when the OS changes in such a way that it will no longer function properly, but that is probably something like another 5 years and by that time there will be alternatives. I agree that it will wither on the vine, but it can provide decent functionality until it is gone.

 

I guess I see no particular reason to avoid taking advantage of decent software that is free. Just my opinion.

 

My point is that Affinity should:

 

Acquire the code

Improve the code

Incorporate the code

Maintain the code

 

for the reasons stated in my second post in this thread.

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Affinity probably does all that most of these plug-ins do anyway - the plugins just make it easier. I would not want Infinity to waste time by entering an already well saturated market. They have "bigger fish to fry" if they really want to compete with Adobe - such as a DAM and decent plug-in support.

 

 

Since it is free I guess I don't see the reason for it to be "avoided at all costs". In fact the costs are zero, aside from the incidental "cost" of using disk space, and it seems reasonable for people to use it while they can. In the end, of course, it will fail when the OS changes in such a way that it will no longer function properly, but that is probably something like another 5 years and by that time there will be alternatives. I agree that it will wither on the vine, but it can provide decent functionality until it is gone.

 

I guess I see no particular reason to avoid taking advantage of decent software that is free. Just my opinion.

 

Why waste time learning software that will end up being broken by a simple thing like an OSX update.

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Affinity probably does all that most of these plug-ins do anyway - the plugins just make it easier. I would not want Infinity to waste time by entering an already well saturated market. They have "bigger fish to fry" if they really want to compete with Adobe - such as a DAM and decent plug-in support.

 

+10 on that, although to be fair the source of the plug-in problem is A-for-Apple, not A-for-Affinity.  

 

Having said that, I can't recall there ever being a satisfactory response to the suggestion that Serif do what many other companies do and offer two versions, one inside the MAS and one directly from Serif modified which has been modified to deal with the processing problem.

Retina iMac (4K display, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM) OS X 10.11.6  Capture One 10.

 

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+10 on that, although to be fair the source of the plug-in problem is A-for-Apple, not A-for-Affinity.  

 

Having said that, I can't recall there ever being a satisfactory response to the suggestion that Serif do what many other companies do and offer two versions, one inside the MAS and one directly from Serif modified which has been modified to deal with the processing problem.

I completely agree with that.

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+10 on that, although to be fair the source of the plug-in problem is A-for-Apple, not A-for-Affinity.  

 

Having said that, I can't recall there ever being a satisfactory response to the suggestion that Serif do what many other companies do and offer two versions, one inside the MAS and one directly from Serif modified which has been modified to deal with the processing problem.

Not sure if Apple are to blame re plug-in support or not. They may be in respect of Photos but that is currently rubbish as a DAM and out of the equation for me. Hopefully it will improve. I spoke to MacPhun about plug-in support for Affinity Photos (they already work with Apple, and Adobe) but they could not have been less interested. Would not be surprised to find that On1 feel the same, although their Photo Browser seems to offer a degree of DAM capability to Affinity Photo.

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Are you aware that Macphun is developed by a group of ex-Nik engineers that went on their own after gobbleGoogle acquired them. The same thing with Snapseed. Before gobbleGoogle it was a great app, not any more. Google does one thing very well, buying companies and then dumping them.

The same goes for a little algorithm that is used to produce panoramas that was developed at the University of British Columbia in Canada. According to what I have seen on their website this algorithm is licensed by Autopano Pro, @Serif, and one other. They have, had, a excellent mobile app called Autostitch. When I went to download it to my iPad Pro I noticed that they would no longer be developing it as they have gone to gobbleGoogle. So there in lies another link to mobile apps.

I follow a photographer that does free tutorials mostly in LR (have learned a lot from him) but he is now advertising a discount for Adobe CC interestingly called an authorized Affinity partner. Hum sounds a little fishy, could Adobe be getting a little worried?

So acquiring Nik, what for? It will now just stand still and I really don't see anything earth shattering at all in the software. There are workarounds to use Macphun but as this AP and AD get better plus-ins may not be necessary.

 

@serif is an awesome company, Bravo. Please don't be tempted by gobbleGoogle.

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@Travelling Man

 

There are many threads on this, but perhaps the best is Post 23 in this thread:  https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4671-how-to-install-plug-ins/page-2  The specific sandbox issue is Apple's policy re IPC memory use.

 

IF that is the truth of it then they should not be selling, or selling solely, via Apple should they? Or am I getting it wrong?. Others have dual marketing - Macphun for instance. Either way the bottom line for me is I cannot consider AP as my sole/prime editor until advances are made in this area (plug-ins) along with others (DAM, RAW processing etc- although the DAM shortfall can be overcome by using Bridge or Perfect Browse).

 

I am sure it will get there, the core editor is developing very nicely indeed.

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IF that is the truth of it then they should not be selling, or selling solely, via Apple should they? 

The suggestion that they market their own version separately from the App Store has been made to them many times by many people, including me. They continue to sell only via the App Store and, whatever it is, I am sure they have a reason for doing so.

 

I do have to admit that I find now that much of the basic AP functionality performs better than the plugins I have been used to using and so I don't use them (the plugins) much anymore.

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I still find plug-ins useful. They have a place in my workflow (or sometimes they do); certainly they can make some things easier/quicker. I have long done away with having stacks of them like Topaz and now restrict myself to a couple of MacPhun apps and the free On1 stuff. These seem to work well provided one does not push it too far! Have to admit if one really wants perfection then pixel level editing is probably best. I try to keep away from this though, preferring to try and get it right in camera. That is why I like LR so much - the RAW tool is really very good and keeps me out of PS most of the time.

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Nik Viveza and Affinity Photo can do many of the same things.  However, Viveza can do these same things faster and easier.  There is an audience for faster and easier.

 

Viveza would make an excellent extension for Apple Photos.  This gives Affinity the chance to sell a product to the customer who might not purchase Affinity Photo.

 

MacPhun unfortunately, it not the solution.  I own several of their excellent products.  They are not compatible with Affinity Photo and they told me MacPhun would not supporting Affinity, they are an Adobe shop.

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There is no point in buying Nik when the AP can already do the job. If you want easy then buy something other than AP - AP is there for a specific market. Macphun is not the answer for the same reason Nik is not - AP does not work with them. Neither does AP work with On1. The answer is for AP to sort out the compatibility problem not buy up redundant software packages. For all that - Nik, Macphun and On1 all work standalone so if you need easy there it is. There are other things AP needs to address now like RAW editing and the DAM issue.

 

Incidentally, if MacPhun are an Adobe shop why have they built extensions for Apple Photos?

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