jimkahnw Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 I tried Photo last night on one sample image Affinity supplies and one of mine. To equal or surpass Photoshop, Photo has a long, long way to go--Photoshop has a 25 year head start. For instance, no eye-dropper for color samples in HSL adjustments, no rotate, flip and scale for stamp tool, and convoluted plug-in installation. Plus various bugs that are to be expected in a beta version; for instance, I could not find a way to turn off the color clipping warning for soft proofing. Also, only a partial list of current camera RAW file support; though files could converted to DNG and imported that way. My Olympus OMD is not supported, yet. Despite this, the feature set seems adequate and yes, I barely scratched the surface. And, no image browser. If Photo is to be considered a serious production tool to rival Lightroom and Photoshop and CaptureOne an asset management tool of some sort should be added. I saw a comment elsewhere on this forum that the developer has prioritized image adjustment, but I would say that production tools are part of the workflow for any professional and should be added sooner rather than later. Yet, for me to seriously consider Affinity Photo, it has to have near-parity with Photoshop--at least all the tools I use. The developer seems ambitious and experienced with a huge catalog of Windows imaging and web apps and a road map for key Mac apps aimed directly at design and photo professionals. They are reasonably priced and a hopefully will be an alternative to the Creative Suite subscription. Adobe could be vulnerable. I want a viable alternative. I will be keeping my eye on this software, and cheering you on. But, I’ll wait until more features are added and more kinks ironed out before I invest the time to learn Photo. Temple Dog 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temple Dog Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 My first impressions closely match yours. A very long way to go! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhp Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 It's a good start, though. My first impression is positive. I tried to do with Photo what I would do with Photoshop, and while the UI is not intuitive to me--largely because of more than a decade of experience with PS--the result of what I was trying to do was about what I expected: I opened a RAW file, developed it, and converted to B&W. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jws Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Not a bad start. But it will not reproduce my raw files clearly (the jpegs are fine). Is the Nikon D750 or D800 supported? Tim_R 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Andy Somerfield Posted February 11, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 11, 2015 Hi guys, thanks for the feedback.. RAW support has been massively improved and will be delivered in the Monday beta update :) Pretty much everything raised is fixed, and even more cameras are supported. Eye droppers for adjustments have come up a few times on the forum since the beta started - we will implement them, along with many other adjustment improvements during the course of the beta. The stamp tool does support rotation and scale - they are on the arrow keys or context toolbar. Flip is an interesting addition - if required, it can easily be added. The plugin thing is a necessary evil, because we intend to ship on the Mac App Store. I have a few ideas about how we can simplify the process though. I wasn't aware of any issue with Soft Proof - but will investigate it. Thanks for taking the time to take a look at Photo - it's early days for us, but we aim to do what we did with the Designer public beta - spend a good few months getting the product in a state which is acceptable to potential customers. We won't ship it until we can get to that point :) Andy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cattoni Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Image browser can be found under View>Media Browser Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D€Z Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 For light photo retouching I think it will work well for most people. Once you get into heavy compositing, Photoshop is obviously much more powerful, but Affinity Photo will grow in time and this is a very solid start for them. To be honest, the slim RAW support isn't an issue for me, as I tend to use Lightroom to process a tiff, then pass that tiff to Photoshop for touching up anyway. I think probably my favorite feature is the Scope in the develop module. This tool will be very familiar to anyone who's done color correction for film and video, and I can't believe it's taken this long to show up in an app for stills. I do wish though, that you could have similar tools for adjusting RAW file color as you do with a pro video app like DaVinci Resolve, which work brilliantly. http://www.digipixelpop.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Andy Somerfield Posted February 11, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 11, 2015 I'm glad you like the scope - I'm hoping to drop in RGB Parade and Vectorscope modes for the next build :) Andy. D€Z 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D€Z Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 I'm glad you like the scope - I'm hoping to drop in RGB Parade and Vectorscope modes for the next build :) Andy. That would be fantastic :) http://www.digipixelpop.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockjano Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Surely a long way to go but I just opened a big CMYK PSD file 700Mb it worked sluggish in PS. It runs incredibly smooth in affinity. Nice job. Speed is IMPRESSIVE. Interface-wise it could be a bit more similar to PS, we are really used to that (I am 25+ years PS user). Nice job keep working... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Andy Somerfield Posted February 11, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 11, 2015 Thanks rock, It's a tough balance with UX - we go our own way and hope that enough of it makes sense. There are bound to be some things which users of other apps consider "weird" - and we are willing to compromise.. Also, thanks for the mention about performance - that's one of the biggest things we want to get across with Photo - it's compositing performance should feel in a different league to pretty much everything else out there. If it doesn't for some documents, that should be reported as a bug.. Andy. rockjano 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D€Z Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Thanks rock, It's a tough balance with UX - we go our own way and hope that enough of it makes sense. There are bound to be some things which users of other apps consider "weird" - and we are willing to compromise.. Also, thanks for the mention about performance - that's one of the biggest things we want to get across with Photo - it's compositing performance should feel in a different league to pretty much everything else out there. If it doesn't for some documents, that should be reported as a bug.. Andy. Please DO NOT make the interface more like PS. Photoshop's interface is outdated and not particularly user friendly to anyone who hasn't been using it for 25 years like our friend in the previous post. Do your own thing, don't be a PS clone. StudioDorgs 1 http://www.digipixelpop.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Data_Shrine Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 I would like to say my first day with Affinity Photo beta went great and I did not encounter any crash. It also worked very well with my old Wacom tablet. It will take time before it can reach all or the majority - of Ps features, but I'm in and I'm happy you guys are making this software (and that it supports printing in a serious way !!) We will all win in the end ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockjano Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Thanks rock, It's a tough balance with UX - we go our own way and hope that enough of it makes sense. There are bound to be some things which users of other apps consider "weird" - and we are willing to compromise.. Also, thanks for the mention about performance - that's one of the biggest things we want to get across with Photo - it's compositing performance should feel in a different league to pretty much everything else out there. If it doesn't for some documents, that should be reported as a bug.. Andy. Thanks Andy Absolutely understand your position. I am also one of the many who's financial existence depend on Adobe's software Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator sometimes Premier and Muse. That is what I do all they working in these softs so it is very difficult to change, and it is hard to find time and energy to learn new things, especially when you really depend on them. What your software proves - and that is a great thing - that it is possible to write a real alternative to Adobe's apps, I have never seen that before and what we suspected before that some Adobe apps do not run with the speed they should. I suspect this could be because of the very old code base written a decades ago. It is vital to have competition in every business and that is just what you can provide. I will try and learn your software I am really interested (seeing that it can open a complicated layered big PS file and use it a lot faster) and I will try to advise and make it better. Yes make your own interface, do it better than they do it Thanks a lot rockjano penwiper, StudioDorgs and Patrick Connor 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leftshark Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Please DO NOT make the interface more like PS. Photoshop's interface is outdated and not particularly user friendly to anyone who hasn't been using it for 25 years like our friend in the previous post. Do your own thing, don't be a PS clone. I love Photoshop, use it every day, as we all know Photoshop is #1 for a reason. But...I have to agree with that comment. When I tried the Affinity Photo beta, I was almost disappointed in how much like Photoshop it looks. The last big revolution was when Aperture/iPhoto and later Lightroom and others gave us a high end photo editing UI that intentionally looked nothing like Photoshop because they felt they had a better way that fit better with what we need today. It has also been said by others that the biggest problem with the free alternatives to Microsoft Office is that they all tried to copy the Office UI instead of finding a better way. This is also a big problem with the GIMP. They assume that there no one is interested in another UI even if it is better. But it seems inconceivable that Microsoft and Adobe already found the best possible UI 25 years ago. As long as other apps visually refer to the Microsoft and Adobe suites, customers will get the impression that the gold reference standards must be Microsoft and Adobe, not this new unknown app. And it may make it harder to convince users that Affinity is "in a different league" if it looks like it actually plays on the same field. If the Affinity Photo team does believe they that can do the exact Photoshop paradigm better than Photoshop, then that's OK, go for it and we'll enjoy it! But if you see an opportunity to, for instance, reinvent layers in a better way than anyone else has, even if it looks nothing like Photoshop, as long as it is better, please please do it. D€Z 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Data_Shrine Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 I think having a UI that is too far away from Ps might make it harder for people to move-on to AF Photo. So far I like the current UI, while I'm not used to it completely yet (and neither in Designer), I feel that it has it's own style while not straying too far from the known logics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRomine Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Image browser can be found under View>Media Browser My Media Browser is only showing my iPhoto and Pictures folder. I must be blind but Is there a way to navigate to other devices through the finder? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRomine Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Great start! Loving it so far! If the Media Browser could remember where is was last located that would be awesome, especially for us dual-dispaly users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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