Why I Can't Learn Affinity Photo

[azartguy]

First of all, AP is a great app. It may well be the equal too, and in some ways, superior to Photoshop. The problem isn't the tool but in the interface. Or more precisely, learning the interface.

 

Choosing to appeal to PS users, disaffected or otherwise, I believe the Serif team made two incorrect assumptions about those users in development, including:  

 

1. That changing terminology from the gold standard Photoshop wouldn't be a problem.

The words we call things matter. Example, if common usage (the base term)  is that A is a process that uses tool B, changing the base term to C means that user has to  learn that C now redefines the process, renames it and so moves it into a different indexed space, just to find, and use, tool B. That is further complicated if the assignment of A to C using tool B is changed to assign it to tool D without a reference , e.g.,  "if you used B in Photoshop to do A, to do the same thing in Affinity you should use D to do C." Without that guide, a digital Rosetta Stone, the learning curve becomes much more difficult.

2.  That everybody who used Photoshop used the tools in the same way.

This may be the greater mistaken:  PS users do not use PS the same way. The many-ways approach isn't just a marketing term for PS, it was integral to how many long-term users learned and applied the program. Like many other PS users, I've been at it through several generations of the app, and learned which of the myriad PS ways to completing a task worked best for me. Not the best ways, perhaps, but my ways. 

 

In fact, these two assumptions are why I'm struggling with AP and may have to switch back to PS.

 

 

[Alfred]

Duplicate thread here.