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Affinity in the Camera Club world


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The fun I have had learnig about Affinity has led me to rejoin the Southampton Camera Club. This Club is one of the oldest camera clubs in the country, and (among other things) holds the largest annual  international competitive photo exhibition  in the UK with several thousand entries. I was disappointed to find that few members had even heard of Affinity, but not surprised that most members , including all the professionals, use Photoshop.

 

However, they are always interested. During a recent workshop I had the opportunity to demonstrate some of the Affiity features. I was somewhat awed to be chatting to two of the leading wildlife photographers in the country. They expressed surprise at the price of Affinity, and were impressed with its capabilities.

 

In the next few weeks, they will hold an evening when some other photo editing systems will be reviewed, and I may be invited to showcase Affinity briefly. While I will accept such a challenge, I am a happy amateur, not a professional photographer. Do you have any advice, assistance, handouts, or  other advice to help me through.

 

(With no respect for modesty I should tell you that I used to regullarly make conference preentations, and when there was a vote for best speaker at the end, I never finished lower than second, so that should be OK. It is the technical capabiity that concerns me)

 

It is possible that I will get access to the image set that another speaker is going to process first in Lightroom, then in another system (sady I cannot remember what it was).. If that happens in time, could I send it to you for advice on the processing? Or a critique of what I think should be done?

 

I am sorry to communicate this so publicly, but I cannot see aother way of getting the question to you.

 

This is the link to Southampton Camera Club : http://www.southamptoncameraclub.co.uk/

 

You may know that I am a long standing Serif Customer.

 

Regards

Graham Rabbitts

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I have a feeling you are going to make a lot of other amateurs very happy :)

 

I have an older copy of Lightroom and the NIK plugins. I stayed away from Photoshop because I could not justify the high cost for a hobby. Then along comes Affinity for Windows. Going by what my local camera club is like, I think you might want to start a sub group just for Affinity Photo. Most of the folks that come in to speak about Photoshop are so advanced as to be useless to a beginner. Best of luck.

Skill Level: Beginner, digital photography, digital editing, lighting.

Equipment: Consumer grade. Sony Nex5n, Nikon D5100, (16MP sony sensors)

Paid Software: Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Lightroom4

Free Software: NIK collection, Sony CaptureOne9, Cyberlink PhotoDirector6, Hugin, ImageJ, MS Ice, Davinci Resolve

Computer: Win10 home, CPU Skylake I7-6700, GPU Saphire HD7850 1G, Plextor SSD

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The last time I was in a photography/camera club was over half a century ago so take this for what it is worth, but if it was me I would devote a little time to briefly explaining that Affinity was developed from new code free of any of the legacy baggage that makes Photoshop such a bloated, resource eating monster. You might also mention these forums & that the developers -- the people that <gasp!> actually write the code -- sometimes participate in the discussions.

 

But most importantly, please mention that there are two Affinity apps, Photo & Designer, to avoid the confusion about that we so often see here.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Thanks all for the encouragement.

The sheer inertia in the Camera Club world , which is totallly locked into Photoshop,  has to be experienced to be believed.

Of about 50 members, I think 5 had heard of Affinity, and none had looked at it.

They simply do not grasp the fact that Affinity offers all that Photoshop and lIghtrooom offer (and some more) at this incredible price, even though they all grumble abut the monthly fee.

I need some 'wow' demos.

I hope that Serif will help. My main reason for contacting them is that I have the opportunity, but i do not want to let them down,

 

regards

Graham

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Thanks all for the encouragement.

The sheer inertia in the Camera Club world , which is totlaly locked into Photoshop,  has to be experienced to be believed.

Of about 50 members, I think 5 had heard of Affinity, and noe had looked at it.

They simply do not grasp the fact that Affinity offers all that Photoshop and lIghtrooom offer (and some more) at this incredible price.

I need some 'wow' demos.

I hope that Serif will help. My main reason for contacting them is that I have the opportunity, but i do not want to let them down,

 

regards

Graham

well it certainly does not offer what LR offers and suggesting this would be a lie 

 

a DAM is coming though https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/13792-dam-affinity-lightroom-killer-request/?p=61067

 

 

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Nor does APh offer all that Photoshop does...nor has all of what PS had back at PS 6 (not CS6) in the year 2000. Don't try to wow anyone--it'll come across fake. Do speak with the exuberance you demonstrate here.

 

Leave the hyperbole for Serif's marketing team. They're, er, good at it. Like was mentioned above, talk about how it aids you in your image processing. Learn as much from the videos Serif has to offer concerning your image retouching needs. Admit you are a beginner with it and are learning even as you are presenting.

 

Stay away (for now) from the videos that do not represent your needs. Drill into the basics until it is mostly rote by the time you present. Don't try to wing an answer to a question that you don't actually know the answer to, but instead admit you don't know and offer to get back with them.

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Stay honest with yourself (what you love and what you do with Photo as part of what you love about photography) and share that with the people attending there that evening.

 

That's the best way to let them know the value and the experience you already lived.

 

Best regards!

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Thanks all for the encouragement.

The sheer inertia in the Camera Club world , which is totallly locked into Photoshop,  has to be experienced to be believed.

Of about 50 members, I think 5 had heard of Affinity, and none had looked at it.

They simply do not grasp the fact that Affinity offers all that Photoshop and lIghtrooom offer (and some more) at this incredible price, even though they all grumble abut the monthly fee.

 

I need some 'wow' demos.

 

I hope that Serif will help. My main reason for contacting them is that I have the opportunity, but i do not want to let them down,

 

regards

Graham

Start your presentation by showing them the official promo video

 

(vimeo.com/194672406)

 

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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This has all been excellent advice. Thank you very much. I must say I feel rather more confident, and I take seriously the advice to avoid superlatives. I intend to mention that AD is primarily a suite for manipulating vector images, but that files can be switched between AP and AD easily.

 

Sadly the venue has very poor broadband, so using the excellent demo videos may be tricky unless I guess the most appropriate and download them beforehand. The intro vidoeo is a good one, and the portrait retouching project was one that really opened my eyes.

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  • 4 months later...

I gave a presentation about Affinity to the Southampton Camera Club. It is one of the oldest camera clubs in the country and runs an international photo competition that is widely supported from many countries. As suggested on this Forum,I used some of the Serif promo videos and a couple of the tutorials.

The audience was probably 60% professional or seriously competent amateur photographers, and 40% amateurs, like me. If you cut the first group in half, you would see “Photoshop” written there like a stick of rock.

The presentation was well received, and all acknowledged that Affinity was a serious product. The amateurs could see the cost advantage. The professionals, and semi professionals, however, had some criticisms (based on having tried Affinity). The principal ones were

1: Files are very slow to load into Affinity Photo. It was suggested that this is because Affinity is a 32 bit program, not a 64bit program. I queried that assertion and suggested it could be that the way Affinity handles live views so well including real time repaints, such as real time views of blends and brushes,  and scans of large files might mean the files would take a bit longer to load at first. Clarification requested.

2: The print functions were regarded by some PS addicts to be poor (to the extent that they looked like an afterthought), though others suggested this might be due to different terminology. I have seen suggestions that print improvement is high up the priority list. More clarity please.

3: The RAW engine was regarded as much poorer than Photoshop. I pointed out that it is planned to make the RAW operations non-destructive, Additional comment welcome.

4: The absence of a DAM (data asset manager) that could match lightroom’s file handling capability was seen by many (including me) as a major weakness, and it was suggested by one PS acolyte that by the time we were charged for the DAM we would be up to the cost  of Lightroom (which, of course, ignored the fact that Lightroom is only available on subscription). I pointed out that even if major pais-for upgrades (i.e. Version 2 etc)  came out every 2 years, Affinity would still be easily competitive with Lightroom on price.

Even the hard bitten PS professionals welcomed the real time display of brushes, blends and filters, and the automatic addition of masks to filters,

It was a relaxed and friendly discussion, and it was clear that even the professionals expect Affinity to put right its weak points. I would love to be able to respond to the comments in a positive manner.

 

 

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The Affinity apps are 64 bit applications.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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