Affinity products for Linux

[Renzatic]

I installed Photoline to see what it's all about.

Seems pretty solid from what little I've seen, but man, that interface is like stepping back into 1998. 

[Snapseed]

1 hour ago, Renzatic said:

I installed Photoline to see what it's all about.

Seems pretty solid from what little I've seen, but man, that interface is like stepping back into 1998. 

But I'll bet you'll find that it pretty much does what Photoshop does and that it's light years ahead of Gimp. If it helps (although they are only in English), there are a couple of introductory guides out there:

http://www.russellcottrell.com/photo/PhotoLine/downloads/PhotoLineTutorial.pdf

http://evrencomert.com/PhotoLine.htm

I do know of people who use the old Photoshop CS2 with Wine rather than use Gimp.

[Renzatic]

1 hour ago, Snapseed said:

I do know of people who use the old Photoshop CS2 with Wine rather than use Gimp.

Thus far, I'm finding it feels like GIMP, if GIMP were actually good.

Also, I love how the smudge brush is just called "finger."

[Snapseed]

58 minutes ago, Renzatic said:

Thus far, I'm finding it feels like GIMP, if GIMP were actually good.

Also, I love how the smudge brush is just called "finger."

I've only seen this in forums and on Youtube and it's also apparently possible to run Paint.net on Linux using PlayOnLinux but I've not tried it.

[Renzatic]

14 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

I've only seen this in forums and on Youtube and it's also apparently possible to run Paint.net on Linux using PlayOnLinux but I've not tried it.

Paint.net is a fairly basic program, isn't it? Nowhere near what AP and Photoshop offer.

[Snapseed]

16 hours ago, Renzatic said:

Paint.net is a fairly basic program, isn't it? Nowhere near what AP and Photoshop offer.

To be fair to it, is much easier to use than Gimp that comes with a distinct learning curve plus it has loads of plugins to enhance its capabilities including G'mic, Topaz filters and other Photoshop filters. It is also free and donations are welcome.

[Renzatic]

1 hour ago, Snapseed said:

To be fair to it, is much easier to use than Gimp that comes with a distinct learning curve plus it has loads of plugins to enhance its capabilities including G'mic, Topaz filters and other Photoshop filters. It is also free and donations are welcome.

The Topaz filters sound interesting, but otherwise it doesn't look like it does much beyond what Krita offers natively.

Photoline, on the other hand, is actually pretty snazzy. Once I spent some time banging on the UI to make it a little nicer looking and easier to navigate, it's really good. It covers the things Krita falls short in, and does it all a lot faster.

Course I'd still rather have Photo and Designer, but until that day comes when I can use them in Linux, PL will cover me quite nicely.

[Snapseed]

4 hours ago, Renzatic said:

The Topaz filters sound interesting, but otherwise it doesn't look like it does much beyond what Krita offers natively.

Photoline, on the other hand, is actually pretty snazzy. Once I spent some time banging on the UI to make it a little nicer looking and easier to navigate, it's really good. It covers the things Krita falls short in, and does it all a lot faster.

Course I'd still rather have Photo and Designer, but until that day comes when I can use them in Linux, PL will cover me quite nicely.

It is really excellent news that you have found a practical and capable alternative right now that works well 🙂

[Renzatic]

55 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

It is really excellent news that you have found a practical and capable alternative right now that works well 🙂

Well...uh...if you want to know a secret, I've since decided to dual boot.

Not that this'll stop me from harassing people here for Affinity Linux. 

[Snapseed]

10 minutes ago, Renzatic said:

Well...uh...if you want to know a secret, I've since decided to dual boot.

Then that means you can use Affinity Photo, etc, right?

Personally, I wouldn't go down that dual boot route but I would use, and buy, software was native Linux or that worked well with CrossOver/Wine.

[Renzatic]

9 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

Then that means you can use Affinity Photo, etc, right?

Personally, I wouldn't go down that dual boot route but I would use, and buy, software was native Linux or that worked well with CrossOver/Wine.

Yup. I was about to buy PL, but I couldn't shake the idea that I already own exactly what I want. It's just not in my preferred OS.

So here I am, back in the world of janky font rendering, and clunky window management (seriously, why can't MS, with all the talent available to them, make task view animate smoothly), but all my preferred programs are immediately available.

Wish I could have my cake, and eat it too. Best I can do for now is split the difference.  

[Snapseed]

18 hours ago, Renzatic said:

Yup. I was about to buy PL, but I couldn't shake the idea that I already own exactly what I want. It's just not in my preferred OS.

So here I am, back in the world of janky font rendering, and clunky window management (seriously, why can't MS, with all the talent available to them, make task view animate smoothly), but all my preferred programs are immediately available.

Wish I could have my cake, and eat it too. Best I can do for now is split the difference.  

It turns out that at WineHQ, the most recent versions of PhotoLine that were tested got the best possible Platinum rating for working well with Wine and here's a quote from one satisfied user, "PhotoLine is rock solid on my Wine. Awesome stuff!".

^ I'd like to see that too for Affinity Photo.

[Renzatic]

It ran perfectly. I decided to give it a roll here in Windows, and there's no difference in look or performance whatsoever.

One of the reasons why I'd assume it runs so well in Wine is because it looks like it's leveraging oldschool Windows APIs, not really pushing the box in any way as far as GPU and interface niceties are concerned.  Meanwhile, the Affinity suite leans on the more modern standards, which Wine doesn't support nearly so well. It makes for a great experience when you can use it, but sorta sucks when those nice features keep you from hopping OSes.

[MikeW]

fwiw, the main PL binary (at least Windows) is written in assembly...if I recall properly. 

[Renzatic]

3 hours ago, MikeW said:

fwiw, the main PL binary (at least Windows) is written in assembly...if I recall properly. 

Wow. People still do that? That's impressive.

[MikeW]

23 minutes ago, Renzatic said:

Wow. People still do that? That's impressive.

And there are only two programmers, who are brothers. Look at the major and dot release threads on the website. It's impressive what the two can do.

The upgrades, one major version to another, are about $30. I've used PL for many versions. 

[Renzatic]

27 minutes ago, MikeW said:

And there are only two programmers, who are brothers. Look at the major and dot release threads on the website. It's impressive what the two can do.

The upgrades, one major version to another, are about $30. I've used PL for many versions. 

Now I might have to buy it out of pure respect for the skillz on display.

[msdobrescu]

Interesting stats: https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/linux-statistics/

[Snapseed]

On 4/29/2021 at 6:38 PM, msdobrescu said:

Interesting stats: https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/linux-statistics/

They are indeed interesting statistics and now all the world's 500 top supercomputers run on Linux which displaced assorted Unix variants such as IBM AIX, etc (OS X, BSD and Windows were just not contenders there).

For us, the really important figure is the desktop market share and last summer Netmarketshare (they have now stopped collecting data) was reporting the Linux figure as 3.6% desktop market compared with 9.2% for macOS and 86.7% for Windows and that relatively low Linux market share is why many general commercial software providers are reluctant to make their software products available for Linux. That said, l hope that at some stage the Serif Affinity product range can become available on Linux via Wine/Crossover.

Finally, Linux has gone where macOS and Windows cannot go and Linux can be now be found on two planets since the Ingenuity helicopter that's been flying on Mars has a Linux operating system:

 

 

[pbaroque20]

On 4/8/2021 at 11:53 AM, Snapseed said:

In your case, it might be worth trying out the native Linux Pixeluvo software and/or the Windows version of PhotoLine with CrossOver/Wine and see how you get on with those two softwares.

Thank you for suggesting PhotoLine! Why didn't I try this sooner? Maybe because I sort-of lost hope? Read through the other positive comments on it and gave it a go.

Transformation operations surprisingly performs REALLY well on high-resolutions. I work with 9k images. Big plus, it even opens .EXR files. Not multi-layered .EXRs (unless I'm overlooking something) but single would do fine. I tried with ProEXR plugin but it crashes on my end.

I couldn't find a simple gamma operation until I found White-Point under Filters > Digital Camera, and works as expected (if you need to set to .33).

The tools feel so good! I can finally work like how I'm supposed to.

Since it's written in Assembly I don't think it's resource intensive. Anyway, this will be my go-to workhorse.

[Snapseed]

On 5/9/2021 at 10:48 PM, pbaroque20 said:

Thank you for suggesting PhotoLine! Why didn't I try this sooner? Maybe because I sort-of lost hope? Read through the other positive comments on it and gave it a go.

Transformation operations surprisingly performs REALLY well on high-resolutions. I work with 9k images. Big plus, it even opens .EXR files. Not multi-layered .EXRs (unless I'm overlooking something) but single would do fine. I tried with ProEXR plugin but it crashes on my end.

I couldn't find a simple gamma operation until I found White-Point under Filters > Digital Camera, and works as expected (if you need to set to .33).

The tools feel so good! I can finally work like how I'm supposed to.

Since it's written in Assembly I don't think it's resource intensive. Anyway, this will be my go-to workhorse.

^ This is excellent news and that software ought to be better known, especially since it can work well on Linux with Wine. Indeed, I'd like to see it bundled up with Wine as an easy to install Snap from the Ubuntu Software Center just like PhotoScape is.

If anyone else is considering trying out this software then there are a couple of introductory guides out there for PhotoLine in English:

http://www.russellcottrell.com/photo/PhotoLine/downloads/PhotoLineTutorial.pdf

http://evrencomert.com/PhotoLine.htm

If anyone needs further advice and assistance then help forums are available in both English and German.

And now here is a screenshot of PhotoLine in action:

 

[Eryka]

But Windows 10 is such a pain! Upgrades that destabilise the parts that used to work smoothly. Lots of time wasted trying to get back to how those things worked. Time that would have been better spent on the other 1001 things that need doing. I'm seriously considering leaving Windows.

[m.vlad]

21 hours ago, Eryka said:

But Windows 10 is such a pain! Upgrades that destabilise the parts that used to work smoothly. Lots of time wasted trying to get back to how those things worked. Time that would have been better spent on the other 1001 things that need doing. I'm seriously considering leaving Windows.

 

[tamjk]

On 10/2/2017 at 11:21 AM, Guest said:

Can I ask why? You won't make version for Linux even despite the fact that linux popularity is higher than mac now?

Oh, don't be such a commercial baybee !

Serif doesn't want us bad boys from Linux hacking away at its lovely little happy-appy.

So we're all off to bed at 5 pm and no supper.

And you cawn't upload any user profile data till you have at least 100 posts . . .

Edited July 4, 2021 by tamjk
Important coda

[Unleavened Tech]

Valve recently announced the Steam Deck and support for games with anti-cheats on Linux. This is technically a gaming console, which might make you think that nobody wants to use it for photo editing or graphics design, but you can actually dock it and use it as a desktop computer. Not having to buy a separate device for gaming on the go and as a computer makes sense for people with tight budgets, who also will not want to spend money on a monthly Adobe subscription. The release of the Steam Deck will draw lots of new users to Linux who will potentially be missing software like Photoshop and Illustrator, this leads me to the next point:

Adobe is the industry standard that 95% people run and Affinity is the underdog. People who run Windows will most likely run an Adobe software, because it's available, but because Adobe software is not available on Linux, if Serif would target Linux users with their software, they could be the dominating software that most Linux users purchase. Why not use this good importunity? Affinity could definitely earn back the amount spent on developing the Linux version of the software.

I'd like to respond to some of Serif's reasons for not porting Affinity software to Linux.

1. "Affinity products are used by photographers and graphic designers, and Linux is used by developers. Therefore it wouldn't be profitable enough."

You have to understand that your software is not only being used by photographers and graphic designers, just like how a text editor is not only used by writers and journalists. A raster image editing software is an everyday tool for all kinds of people. Software developers, who you say use Linux, do often need to make changes to image files contained in their program. It might not be as involved of a work than a photographer would do, but they still need the basic tools offered by image editing programs. Indie developers and people doing personal/hobby projects will also need to do branding and designing icons on their own.

2. "It would cost $500,000 to port Affinity to Linux."

If it would cost that much to port a software, you are seriously doing something wrong. $500,000 is a lot of money even for creating a piece of software from scratch. We understand that porting the UI requires a lot of work due to the library being used, however as pointed out by multiple people, Serif could work with CodeWeavers to make Affinity work on Linux through a Windows compatibility layer. This would still require work, but it would be substantially less. The Linux version could still be sold separately.

3. "Linux users only use free & open-source software and refuse to use anything that is proprietary or you have to pay for."

While this is true for some Linux users, those users don't use free and open-source software because they use Linux, it's the other way around, they use Linux because it's free and open-source software. Most people using Linux do not mind running *good* proprietary software. On Linux there is an official, proprietary driver for Nvidia graphics cards and there is an open-source implementation - the proprietary driver is actually used by more people, because it is better. One of the most popular and much glorified distributions among Linux-enthusiasts, Arch Linux, actually endorses both open-source and proprietary software and you can actually install a lot of proprietary applications straight from the official Arch repositories.

4. "Because there are so many Linux distributions, we would have to release a package for each of them."

Wrong. Flatpaks run on all Linux distributions and are preferred by a lot of people because of their security model and self-containment. AppImages are the equivalent of Windows' portable applications and can be run on any distribution just by downloading them, enabling execution in properties and double clicking on their icon.

5. "Linux already has GIMP and their users are not going to switch to Affinity Photo."

A lot of people don't want to use GIMP because it is a very poorly made program in terms of UI and UX - even Edward Snowden pointed that out. And as you can clearly see in this thread, there are a lot of people who would like to use Affinity over GIMP, and are turning to Photo-Line instead of GIMP as an alternative. GIMP is a software commonly used in schools and educations, and the most common reaction from students (and even teachers) is "Photoshop is much better, why do we have to use this piece of 💩?" Also, a lot of gamers who are going to use Linux because the Steam Deck are young students who would not like to use GIMP, and would be looking at other alternatives to Photoshop.

6. "There is not enough demand for a Linux version."

It is literally the most requested feature in these forums. There is clearly a demand. Just check the most replied to and most viewed topics in the feedback forum.

 

Especially now with the release of the Steam Deck, Linux usage is predicted to grow in the future. If you think long term, it is also clear that Windows will not be the operating system that is going to run on every desktop device 30 years in the future, because it's legacy architecture and inflexibility - I mean, just look at how it still struggles to run on ARM processors (and ARM processors are going to be the only choice in the future as there is not much left in squeezing more performance out of x86 CPUs as Moore's law has ended). You will have to support Linux, it's just a matter of time. The sooner you realize that, the more users you can target and therefore the more profit you can enjoy.