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Affinity products for Linux


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17 hours ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

Krita is not a general purpose image editor, and aimed at digital painting. It wipes the floor with Affinity Photo in this respect (even Photoshop cannot keep up with painting in Krita), and Krita is widely in use by many professional digital illustrators.

Apples and oranges.

I beg to respectfully differ.

In Krita,  Alt for color picking is slow when configured in the Wacom pen's side button compared to Photoshop. If you paint with realistic style, strongly based on fast canvas color picking, this becomes an issue quite fast. Photoshop when configured well for GPU usage with a good card has an amazing painting performance (most complaining about PS painting performance are often students on a laptop with integrated card, poor CPU and not much RAM) , and the blending of basic brush (meaning, the main brush system)  is IMO better than in Krita.  Indeed, when well configured Photoshop CC 2018, 19 and 20 gets you a lot more performance in very large canvases when doing a painting for a client who requires exactly that, a large painting 2 meters wide at 300 dpi. Actually, it does this better than most apps (tested it all carefully). Also, IMO the flow/opacity control in Photoshop is superior. Corel Painter has been there for ages. And that one is pretty good for painting, too. Maybe the other advantages (many due to being a versatile image editor) are not so minimal when despite Painter's existence for decades (and years of Art Rage, Sketchbook Pro and etc), Photoshop has continued to be the choice for so, so many amazing digital painters. Even more, the main tool for concept artists at almost every game studio. To the point that for most of them you cannot be even a candidate (easy to check in a job interview) if PS would not be your tool for painting. And I'm leaving out the studios which mainly want a photo basher.

Indeed, I'm pretty sure PS is used by way more digital painters, matte painters and concept artists than Krita.

That said, I believe Krita has a very bright future. But I see big issues that I don't see in Clip Studio Paint, for example. Indeed, I'd choose Corel Painter over Krita (if weren't that darn expensive in its non subscription option, and its subs based one... well, I'm against subscriptions in software) , but not over CSP. And it is exciting to have the option of purchasing things like the Atelier addon, which does a very good job on mimicking well oil paints and water colors. But until it gets really integrated in Krita (and so, ensured it will be there to stay, as the Atelier is done and maintained by a guy not inside the Krita team), and the alt + wacom button issue improved, blending using the basic brush, and some performance matters... Till then I think it will keep being nice, but nothing ground breaking. Specially not with the options available, at least on Windows and Mac OS.

BTW, the incoming Gimp update is impressive. And they really are finally going for a full CMYK mode (not in the next update).

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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11 hours ago, fde101 said:

ou missed GIMP, Inkscape, and sK1, at least.

Sk1 has really a slow updates pace.  To say it extremely gently. It's been a bunch of years, now. But I give to it a massive kudos for having put CMYK support from the start (thankfully, it was founded by illustrators, or at least, part of the team was, from what I read).

Inkscape is WAY stronger in functionality than most people think, indeed.  Most get thrown away by the UI. Most of those having not handled really hard UIs, btw. And Gimp is the one of those 3 advancing faster, lately. And yep, these are good apps. But a lot of people (even Linux users (specially new breed ones)... which I find pretty shocking) automatically think proprietary apps are better. No matter how much Blender is proving every day (with every update and in the hands of pro users... heck, is my only tool for 3D, now) that while those have the clear advantage due to resources and money, it is possible too in the open source land to create pro level tools.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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On 2/20/2020 at 7:00 PM, LucasKA said:

It runs on Mac and Windows, so already it's using two "very different UI toolkits". I don't really find that an excuse.

The answer, as always, is they just don't want to.

While I would concur that there is a lack of will on the part of Serif to produce a Linux version you should never underestimate the work involved in un-intertwining the mess of business logic and UI code that many large apps end up with. A distinct advantage that AfterShot has is that it used a cross platform UI toolkit from the get go and as a result they offer Linux. macOS and even a Windows version.

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8 hours ago, msdobrescu said:

Blink is a fork of WebKit's component WebCore

It started off that way, yes, but it is no longer the same thing.

 

8 hours ago, msdobrescu said:

You did not answer the question, as long as Edge is based on the same as chrome, why not Chrome? Why Edge?

I didn't recognize this as a question.  I wouldn't bother with "new" Edge except if you are developing sites and need to test compatibility with it once in a while.  Even if Edge and Chrome are built on the same engine there may still be differences introduced which could result in testing on both being a good idea (I would probably test primarily on Chrome then test sporadically or at least a "release candidate" check on Edge if I felt a need to test on Edge at all).  As to "legacy" Edge, unless compatibility is actually required for some internal business reason or some such...   there are good reasons for M$ to abandon it and I see no particular reason for users to not do the same.

On Windoze, the primary value of Edge is as a superior tool compared to Internet Explorer with which to download the installer for Chrome.

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@fde101, my clients still prefer IE - that's horror! Seems that Microsoft promised to keep it alive forever...

I expect Edge to render slightly different under Linux (as long as fonts engines and fonts themselves are not the same...). But, yeah, I'd like to have the possibility to test under Edge on Linux.

My favorite is Firefox, though.

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14 hours ago, msdobrescu said:

@fde101, Blink is a fork of WebKit's component WebCore.

You did not answer the question, as long as Edge is based on the same as chrome, why not Chrome? Why Edge?

Cor blimey, this has run away and I was only gone a few hours. I'm the one who mentioned MS Edge, then someone else responded instead of me. And simply because I really like it. It's now my go-to browser on MacOS. Has better memory management than Google Chrome. May not be the same on Linux, of course. Will wait and see.

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1 minute ago, Elbowes said:

Cor blimey, this has run away and I was only gone a few hours. I'm the one who mentioned MS Edge, then someone else responded instead of me. And simply because I really like it. It's now my go-to browser on MacOS. Has better memory management than Google Chrome. May not be the same on Linux, of course. Will wait and see.

Apologies for the confusion. I expect it to be as good under Linux as under Mac or Windows, as other Microsoft products are (like SQL Server, VSCode and .Net Core, for instance).

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21 hours ago, fde101 said:

You missed GIMP, Inkscape, and sK1, at least.

GIMP... I've never got on with. Same with Scribus. I feel like I'm driving Adobe PageMaker 6.5 circa 1997.

Inkscape.. I actually quite like this application and have used it cross-platform in the past, though again it reminds me of CorelDraw 8.

SK1 I hadn't come across -- so thanks.

The UI is my big gripe with a lot of Linux apps. They often feel so dated, though I'm glad that's beginning to change. e.g. OnlyOffice vs Libre Office. 

A graphics app really ought to have visually pleasing interface. Serif does this really well with Affinity. 

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4 minutes ago, Elbowes said:

A graphics app really ought to have visually pleasing interface. Serif does this really well with Affinity. 

Actually, the functionality and productivity are the most important to me. For instance, Inkscape is OK, but not that usable and missing some basic functions, like picking some object properties, especially the gradient, to clone them to another object. RawTherapee is very capable, I find it more usable than Darktable, although Darktable is capable too. What is painful, is that they are close to what they should be until you find something that misses is a real blocker, like not having a boundary warp tool in Hugin. What is nice about them is the collaboration, Gwenview can send raw files to RawTherapee, Darktable or GIMP, Hugin can read the raw files through those two. But Inkscape produces SVG, which is fine, but not for printing ... yet. And so on. You can never get what you do by using Adobe's or Serif's tools.

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15 minutes ago, Elbowes said:

They often feel so dated

Yeah, back when they designed things to be useful for getting things done rather than just trying to make them look good to attract the unsuspecting...

Those were the days...  😊

 

We need more of that. 

Visually pleasing is good as long as it doesn't get in the way of being functional and useful, and doesn't slow things down more than it is worth.

The simplicity of the visual design of the original Macintosh operating system has yet to be surpassed. 😎

 

 

15 minutes ago, Elbowes said:

A graphics app really ought to have visually pleasing interface. Serif does this really well with Affinity. 

Yes, they certainly do.

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10 hours ago, OS1 said:

While I would concur that there is a lack of will on the part of Serif to produce a Linux version you should never underestimate the work involved in un-intertwining the mess of business logic and UI code that many large apps end up with. A distinct advantage that AfterShot has is that it used a cross platform UI toolkit from the get go and as a result they offer Linux. macOS and even a Windows version.

If you look back, I also said, "nothing in tech is trivial", so I understand the effort of uncoupling business logic from UI (Additionally, I am an UI Engineer professionally).

My point with the comment is that having developed for 2 platforms with wildly different UI Layers, they had the opportunity to decouple, and the learning from that in order to make it multiplatform.

Serif's decision doesn't appear to stem from technology IMO. Originally Designer was staunchly a Mac ONLY product, but apparently the business opportunity was there for Windows. We will never know what any of this stuff is truly based on, just what Serif says.

One thing is extremely apparent. They do not care about the Linux market.

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5 hours ago, Elbowes said:

GIMP... I've never got on with. Same with Scribus. I feel like I'm driving Adobe PageMaker 6.5 circa 1997.

Inkscape.. I actually quite like this application and have used it cross-platform in the past, though again it reminds me of CorelDraw 8.

SK1 I hadn't come across -- so thanks.

The UI is my big gripe with a lot of Linux apps. They often feel so dated, though I'm glad that's beginning to change. e.g. OnlyOffice vs Libre Office. 

A graphics app really ought to have visually pleasing interface. Serif does this really well with Affinity. 

I get what you say. And... what I meant, it depends on what have you been forced to deal with, to be able to "forgive" certain UIs... is that I yet remember how it was Blender when using C-License, before becoming open source. Basically there was no UI, so to speak. LOL. Or worse. I "enjoyed" some pre-alpha internal map editors and other game editing utilities, in-house made, with spagetthi C++ code (so they called it, lol) , crashing every two seconds or hard breathing. Counter intuitive to the point of thinking how difficult would have been to make that so badly IF made on purpose. I mean.. those were the days. I still remember how we saw Truespace as a wonder of an UI, as it saved us from a "harder" UI as Blender (intitial) was... and I can tell you, current Gimp or Inkscape were  A TON more usable and intuitive than that thing. Heck, Autodesk Animator 1.0 for DOS, or Deluxe Paint, as much praise as those always get, people knew those well as were forced to learn them, no other option. And became really familiar. But if you think of it, to guess what everything did for a newcomer was quite more difficult. And certainly, the workflows were not the fastest possible, to say the least. Much more cumbersome than today's. And I've handled those to the deepest level at school, even later in college (while even Corel Draw 4 was already around). My point is that, after many years (decades) clearly detecting as the main problem the lack of a capability I forced my self to... kind of... "like every UI". Or ended up make it so familiar to me that I'd get inside the weird mind of who made that crime of an UI, in every case.

Currently, we need fast UIs, can't compete in the market if not. But not for learning ease,  but because a more clicks workflow, slower UI will penalize you in a competitive market. Even so I prefer functionality and solid function, bug free, over UI excellence. That's why I'm fine with Gimp, Inkscape, or (less the case) Scribus. What made me not just stay with them after using 'em for all at latest companies was indeed the lack of functionality. IE, yet Gimp today (latest released version) when opening a CMYK file, needs to convert it to sRGB, can do so to a wider color space. And has to do so as yet does not have a CMYK color mode. But from being reluctant to even touch CMYK, to adding this now, and clearly having a full CMYK mode in the near roadmap.... That's HUGE. But anyone can easily see how far away then is Affinity Photo in several industry matters that are absolutely crucial. And yet... in its own way, Gimp is very powerful.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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5 hours ago, msdobrescu said:

 But Inkscape produces SVG, which is fine, but not for printing ... yet. And so on. You can never get what you do by using Adobe's or Serif's tools.

Well, Inkscape also exports PDF ( I believe  they still use Cairo for that, but not sure...)

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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6 hours ago, msdobrescu said:

Hi, where can I find this information? Thank you.

Of course, no problem. I've heard certain details from some individuals closer to the  team (the most important info... but can't link that...mostly that thanks to certain Google Summer project, certain individual (I always forget the name, sorry) is going to code most of that part of providing full CMYK support to Gimp), but so to put here right now at least some links to get you some info : 

The roadmap (old news, as it has been made clear that CMYK will be fully in quite earlier than initially expected) in "The Future" section :

https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap

In here, jump to the "What’s new in GEGL and babl" section :

https://www.gimp.org/news/2020/01/04/gimp-and-gegl-in-2019/

In the version 2.10.18 just released 2 days ago, 24th, pls jump to the section "PSD support improvements" ...I believe we will be seeing bits like this in the updates this year, so, in the right direction

https://www.gimp.org/news/2020/02/24/gimp-2-10-18-released/

And in  their FAQ, before there was an answer with a not too convenient explanation and link to an article of how CMYK was not a good idea in Gimp (proprietary stuff, libraries, etc), but they have instead changed 180º in that, thankfully (or thanks to GEGL that allows them to move from a very static situation with the color modes), and what their plans are now are very promising (it's all owed to several new libraries merged - or in the process-  with Gimp) :

https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-desktop-publishing-related-work-will-you-ever-support-cmyk

Considering the position both Inkscape ( I believe is also working on the CMYK stuff, but don't quote me on that...) and Gimp were stubbornly  installed at, for many years, in relation to CMYK, all this is HUGE for the app, so to become really solid for professional print workflows. And yet so, in this, Affinity is eons ahead of it. But despite that, quite promising. Gimp has also grown crazily lately (meaning, recent months) in functionality and UI improvements not related to CMYK. I keep believing that many of the Linux users are not really giving it a solid chance. It can't be that me (maybe as had to use it at work, heavily), who am now a Windows user till a new major world order change might occur, can use it problem-free, even on my Windows (and these apps tend to run better on Windows that on Mac, but much better on Linux than on Windows), and that Linux lovers can't see its real value.  Really, you have a very strong alternative in Gimp and Inkscape (specially the 1.0 beta!!). I have not handled that much Scribus, as I'm not so much into publishing apps, but the little I used it, I could manage, despite the super spartan and hard UI. And Blender... well, that's in an entirely different league. That thing is a wonder, full stop.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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10 hours ago, SrPx said:

Even so I prefer functionality and solid function, bug free, over UI excellence.

True. And I guess UI comfort also has a lot to do with familiarity. 

In my first attempt to use Mac as a Windows 7 user, I just couldn't get on with it and ultimately went back. There was nothing wrong with OSX... I just wasn't used to it.

I've now been using Mac for 5 years, so find Windows 10 jarring at times. But again, that's really just because I've got used to one more than the other.

As for Linux, yes, I've been through a multitude of distributions and desktop environments over the past 15 years to find one that suited me. Finally settled on a constant, simply because I'm getting too old and grumpy tinker anymore.

Looking back, it's also good to remember how I got here. Funny to see how picky I've become...

  • Stop Press on an Amstrad PCW.
  • Serif Page Plus on my first Windows desktop.
  • Adobe PageMaker 5 at college.
  • Adobe PageMaker 6.5 at university.
  • Adobe PageMaker 6.5 + Photoshop 6 + CorelDraw 10 in first job.
  • QuarkXpress 4.1 (second-hand licence) in second job.
  • Adobe InDesign CS3 in next job.
  • Stuck on Adobe CS5 Design Premium for a decade, originally on Windows then on Mac, until MacOS conclusively dropped 32bit app support.
  • Switched to Affinity Photo and Designer at work.
  • Added Affinity Publisher this year. 

Really, I'm spoilt today!

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I come from using a Spectrum 48K in 1985, going through the glorious 286 and previous XTs... But today am more flexible to UIs, not less... I believe is mostly (please, don't get offended... it happens to me, when I let it be...) that we're all lazy, the young and the old ones... But then we justify it the best we can, hehe.

I agree the comfort zone is, well, comfy. But is also dangerous...  ;)

PS: I am not opposing to your argument : It happens. All my point is that it is a bad habit...  ;)

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Indeed, functionality vs standard GUI, innovation over establishment, thinking outside the box... I'd say is part of what the initial Linux community was about...

And so, a bad UI with great functionality might stop a mac or windows user (less the latter), but quite less a linux user. Specially of those starting in the 90s, when there were no graphical UIs, indeed. Not defending that one should use bad UIs. As one should be able to learn any UI, but a bad UI ends up also being slow for the work. And that's worse than having a steep learning curve. I don't care if an UI is darn hard to learn. But if something requires a lot of clicks more (happens to Gimp in several features) than the competitors in the same tasks... then that's bad, and sth to fix with more priority than an ugly UI, yep.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Elbowes said:

The gentleman who taught me typesetting used to say much the same. He began his career using hot metal typesetting, until phototypesetting came along. He reckoned it all went downhill from the 1980s on, when everything began to transition to computers. 🙂

Another perspective is, that sounds like someone's livelihood being threatened by emergent technology, not necessarily truth.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Greetings,

I have discovered a propriety, pro-level, cross-platform DTP application in the form of VivaDesigner:

http://www.viva.us/en/products/desktop-publishing/vivadesigner-desktop-version

It's not priced as competitively as Affinity Publisher. The personal version is priced £99, though this version misses key features.

The commercial version costs £280, which pushes us back into InDesign territory. There is a free version, but it is very limited. 

In any case, it may prove a viable alternative for serious Linux users desperate for Affinity-quality apps on their platform (particularly if someone else is paying the bills).

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1 hour ago, Elbowes said:

I have discovered a propriety, pro-level, cross-platform DTP application in the form of VivaDesigner.

It's nowhere near as intuitive as Affinity Publisher though. Has the main features you'd expect from a modern DTP application, but still quite frustrating to use (early days of testing). Ho hum.

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