What I DON'T want in APhoto

[bizbeblu]

Okay, I admit it. I'm a long term user of Ps, as in when it was just Photoshop - no number. I'm a professional photographer both as a newspaper reporter/photographer (mostly high school sports) and make a decent living selling "art" photos which cover a wide variety of subjects, but do focus on the Sonoran desert. I've paid for my knowledge of Ps with as Churchill said, "Blood, Toil, Sweat, and Tears." I use the program on a daily basis (along with Lr). In truth, the program is an utter beast - no an ameba - no the rising flood - no, I've got it: The Borg. "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." Over the years Ps has become a monstrosity built on an ancient foundation. The program has never been rewritten from the ground up. Yet, now it has literally everything including the kitchen sink while promising to make you tall, good looking, rich, and sexy. Oh, and it will make you a great photographer!

 

The greatest drawbacks to Ps are twofold. First is performance. It has never really embraced modern processors. Yes, it acknowledges multiple cores and there as been some work with threading, but let's face it: the program is a slow dog walking. Second is usability and the user's experience. I can't tell you how many times I can't do a thing I'd just done because some tiny alteration has been made that prevents the operation from taking place. No other piece of software has ever induced as much profanity from me as Ps has over the years. (Well, there was SAS, but that's a different saga.)

 

I know my current knowledge of APhoto is skimpy. As the old saying goes, "When you're up to your a** in alligators, it's hard to remember you were draining the swamp." I know that most of the things I need are in the program but things are arranged in different ways and oft times called something else. I understand the need for this as I strongly suspect that Adobe employs more lawyers than the entirety of AffinitySerif's staff. 

 

So what do I want from Affinity Photo? (1) First and foremost - FASTER. The RAWs get bigger, the transformations more complex, and everything needs more horsepower. I fervently hope Affinity makes sure every release improves performance. Multi-core, hyperthreading, prefetch, etc., etc. (2) Always look to a cleaner and more coherent interface. I've been a programmer in my long ago and guilty past. Programmers know how to do everything. We mere users? No software vendor should ever release a program without extensive vetting by knowledgeable users. Listen to them and make changes they suggest.

 

I see demands for HDR, panorama, RAW conversion, stacking, focus repair, perspective correction, ad infinitum. Photo should stick to photos, the core place where the photographer first turns to examine and begin work. It must become a host for the multitude of plugins that make the photog's life easier. Work with other vendors. Make it easy to plug tools in. Actively seek them out. Evangelize. We need the plugins.  I've tried to install plugins in AP without success. Even after reading the help, I still get a list of questioned plugins that when called freeze the program. APhoto, become a host to the many wonderfully specialized tools that make our life easier! MacPhun has several excellent tools. I still use the old NIK tools, particularly SFX and Viveza. Topaz's tools vary, but several are good. You can work wonderful HDR with several tools. Same with panorama, stacking, B&W emulation with ASA grain qualities. DXO has the best perspective correction tools, and their RAW converter is hands down far better than anything on the market.

 

So no, I'm not an expert with Affinity Photo. Yet. Intellectual inertia is a terrible thing, but when up against the clock I don't have time to learn something new, different even if it is better. Yet I will. I hate living under the tyranny of the Adobe universe. (No, I've not bought into the "Mafiaware" program.) I want, I need Photo to succeed, brilliantly succeed! I'm going to become your evangelist, propagandist, expert, an inveterate user. But to get me, you must always be dedicated to quality improvement and, please "stick to the knitting!"

 

Robert Sorrels

 

Ajo Az

[MJSfoto1956]

Well as a long time PS user (since before it was v1 !) I can say that AP is generally faster across the board compared to PS on my 15" Macbook Pro with 16gb RAM. I'm not sure it could be "faster" given that they appear to be using the native graphics routines built into the OS. Perhaps one day I will go back to a desktop, but for the foreseeable future, I see only laptops in my future...

 

M

[kirk23]

I wonder why any modern game  has  shaders that able to do so complex per pixels calculations , pretty much similar to having a huge stack of "live" effects, for a huge screen resolution sometimes up to 3 screens at the same time . Doing all this in a fraction of second  and any given image editing program do it so painstakingly slow.   Even proclaiming GPU support.       

[Ben]

I wonder why any modern game  has  shaders that able to do so complex per pixels calculations , pretty much similar to having a huge stack of "live" effects, for a huge screen resolution sometimes up to 3 screens at the same time . Doing all this in a fraction of second  and any given image editing program do it so painstakingly slow.   Even proclaiming GPU support.       

 

There are a number of reasons.  Often games use known or fixed pipelines, and heavily preprocessed data. The editing phase and optimisation of input data was done way in advance of it being used in the render pipeline, sometimes at considerable cost that couldn't work in realtime (or 30fps).  Render pipelines are also often ordered and restricted for performance reasons, and certain tricks used to limit wasted calculations.

Games also only require the data to go in one direction - to the graphics card (and display).  They can be loaded with managed inputs, but the results and intermediate stages can be kept on the graphics card, without the need to pass it back to main memory for other processing. Transferring pixel data back and forth between memory on the card and main memory has historically been slow.

 

So, it's not a good comparison between games and creative software.

[JokeRat]

Nice insights, Ben. Thanks for that!

 

I'd love to read more about developing challenges and such things.

[kirk23]

I 'd love to see a companion software with all those pre-processing and other limitations done  but working purely within GPU pipeline with a speed of light.   Having  convenient and simple interface.    No brushes,   just composing of bitmap objects  plus all those "live effects"  modern games able to do with frame buffer.    

 

After all  those real time shadows and reflections  are 2d "image editing"  too, considering depth Z buffer is also a 2d image .    

 

Would love to see depth channel at least.    Maybe a separate "gamey" preview and  a final  rendering/export to a picture with higher resolution.

 

Just do all necessary sacrifices and do it as simple as games are for its users.  With convenient onscreen interaction and your cool export persona.       I don't want any new Fusion or Nuke , a flexible solution.   Always shudder when hear word "flexible" from a programmer . Instantly know it would be something nobody would able to comprehend and would require years to dig things out.     

 

I believe such layers based  2d composing companion would have its market share since I don't need all those too complex things Nuke does and many don't too I believe.  

  Still  sometimes  It looks like we sooner have Unreal editor to be a nicer image soft  than a regular one.