Affinity lost match against Luminar... again !

[axoloth]

Luminar has just announced that its latest version offers the functions of catalogs ...
When will the Affinity team understand that this tool is important?
I know a lot of photographers, amaters or pros, who stays at the competition unnaturally because of that ... and others, like me, who is thinking about coming back to Adobe or going to another competitor ...

[Steps]

I somehow really lost count on all these "We need a lightroom replacement" topics. This may be the 50th...

Please, may a mod pin any of the Lightroom topics to stop people creating over and over new topics on that? I would appreciate that.

I would suggest this one. It was not the first and not the longest, but it contains a poll:

Or pin this thread as it contains an official answer from @MattP:

[Steps]

53 minutes ago, axoloth said:

I know a lot of photographers, amaters or pros, who stays at the competition unnaturally because of that ... and others, like me, who is thinking about coming back to Adobe or going to another competitor ...

Because a DAM is missing? I don't believe that.

You can use Luminar and Affinity Photo in conjuction. What does stop you from doing so?

I use the very good DAM digiKam right now and will eventually switch to Affinity DAM if it can compete. And if not it's also okay.

Having a DAM from Affinity is really not that important. It's a nice to have when the Publisher is ready, but not before. Seriously.

[Uncle Mez]

58 minutes ago, axoloth said:

Luminar has just announced that its latest version offers the functions of catalogs ...
When will the Affinity team understand that this tool is important?
I know a lot of photographers, amaters or pros, who stays at the competition unnaturally because of that ... and others, like me, who is thinking about coming back to Adobe or going to another competitor ...

Hi Dear !
well its actually depends on the kind of Job you are intended to do.
When you read about Luminar they say it is not a Photo retouch software at the level of Photoshop nor APhoto that's the reason why even you ask a lot they will reply to you that they can't add tools that you enjoy using both with Ps and APhoto.
So it is clear that Luminar 3 plays in another area and is not a challenger to APhoto, you can only compare it to Lightroom because they both plays in the same pool.

APhoto is not only a Photo compositor but also a Photo Manipulation software which is intended to help you process in-depth pixel works of all kinds while Luminar can't do that.

Believe me i use Luminar 3 and it is awesome a great software and i use it in my workflow for some precise task like sharpening, vibrance etc. (honestly Luminar does it much better than APhoto) but when it come to more elaborate stuffs like clarity or High Pass believe me APhoto does it even better.

The only thing i believe Serif may copy or learn from Skylum are: Preset/Looks and the way Luminar handle its non-destructiveness.
Well here there is need of a solution because the develop persona makes it all destructive which is ... kind of bad.
But after all this is mentioned, just take note that Teaming Affinity Photo with Luminar 3 in the same workflow will make you increase fast and far better.

i would finish by challenging you to try Movavi Photo Editor v5 (the last version should be 5.6) you will find it even easy and amazing but like Luminar 3 it is not intended for in-depth pixel works but Photo Retouching.

Blessings !

[axoloth]

30 minutes ago, Steps said:

Because a DAM is missing? I don't believe that.

You can use Luminar and Affinity Photo in conjuction. What does stop you from doing so?

I use the very good DAM digiKam right now and will eventually switch to Affinity DAM if it can compete. And if not it's also okay.

Having a DAM from Affinity is really not that important. It's a nice to have when the Publisher is ready, but not before. Seriously.

No... an integrated DAM could work with affinity native format, that's important.
When you have thousand photo, some with several treatments; you don't care organizing RAW or exports, you need to organized/tags/catlogs your work... the Affinity native format...
Maybe you don't need it, but believ me, lots of people a know don't go from Adobe to Affinity because there are no DAM...

After... maybe if people repeat usualy this subject, it's because Serif annonce THE DAM since years, and nothing are coming...

[Steps]

2 minutes ago, axoloth said:

When you have thousand photo, some with several treatments; you don't care organizing RAW or exports, you need to organized/tags/catlogs your work... the Affinity native format...

Can you rephrase that? I'm not sure if I got that right.

I have thousands of RAWs and JPGs with tags that I organize. I don't organize in the same way my PSD or APhoto files as they are basicly a "sidecar" file to the more important RAW.

What do you mean here?

[axoloth]

26 minutes ago, Uncle Mez said:

Hi Dear !
well its actually depends on the kind of Job you are intended to do.
When you read about Luminar they say it is not a Photo retouch software at the level of Photoshop nor APhoto that's the reason why even you ask a lot they will reply to you that they can't add tools that you enjoy using both with Ps and APhoto.
So it is clear that Luminar 3 plays in another area and is not a challenger to APhoto, you can only compare it to Lightroom because they both plays in the same pool.

APhoto is not only a Photo compositor but also a Photo Manipulation software which is intended to help you process in-depth pixel works of all kinds while Luminar can't do that.

Believe me i use Luminar 3 and it is awesome a great software and i use it in my workflow for some precise task like sharpening, vibrance etc. (honestly Luminar does it much better than APhoto) but when it come to more elaborate stuffs like clarity or High Pass believe me APhoto does it even better.

The only thing i believe Serif may copy or learn from Skylum are: Preset/Looks and the way Luminar handle its non-destructiveness.
Well here there is need of a solution because the develop persona makes it all destructive which is ... kind of bad.
But after all this is mentioned, just take note that Teaming Affinity Photo with Luminar 3 in the same workflow will make you increase fast and far better.

i would finish by challenging you to try Movavi Photo Editor v5 (the last version should be 5.6) you will find it even easy and amazing but like Luminar 3 it is not intended for in-depth pixel works but Photo Retouching.

Blessings !

Hi !
I agree but by buying Affinity, I was hoping not to buy another software.
I saw in him an all in one ...

Thanks

[Steps]

40 minutes ago, Uncle Mez said:

i would finish by challenging you to try Movavi Photo Editor v5 (the last version should be 5.6) you will find it even easy and amazing but like Luminar 3 it is not intended for in-depth pixel works but Photo Retouching.

Thanks for giving that hint. I wasn't aware of it's existence and just trialed the Photo Manager / DAM part of it.

Sadly this Photo Manager is really lacking in functionality. You can't give stars (only mark favourites) and assigned tags do not show up in the thumbnail overview.

I don't know who stole from whom here, but it really looks nearly identical to the "Photos" app integrated in Windows 10. So this is barely a DAM. Also Windows 10 has face detection and tagging (which is useless because it does not write into the metadata, but just wanted to mention).

The Photo Editor is both very basic in functionality and usability. For some strange reason it's enough to look at a tools cropping & straighten capability to get an idea how andvanced it is. There are too many open source or otherwise free tools to compete with it (including Windows 10 Photo App) for the 50€ they want.

[axoloth]

1 minute ago, Steps said:

Can you rephrase that? I'm not sure if I got that right.

I have thousands of RAWs and JPGs with tags that I organize. I don't organize in the same way my PSD or APhoto files as they are basicly a "sidecar" file to the more important RAW.

What do you mean here?

Oh sorry for my poor english...
I will try to rephrase... with google translate  :-)

What I expect from a possible DAM integrated Affinity, would be to catalog, tag, file files as soon as they are imported, ie RAW, as well as files in native format Affinity.
I would like to be able to go from one file of the DAM to another persona, to return to the DAM ... I do not know how to express it, but that there is an intimate link between the file Afinity and the RAW as in LightRoom.

Hope being cleer

Thanks

[Steps]

Yes, that came clear.

I did not think of that use case before. I mainly organize my JPGs with digiKam.

Has using Lightroom the benefit of tagging and organizing the PSD files, too?

[axoloth]

6 minutes ago, Steps said:

Has using Lightroom the benefit of tagging and organizing the PSD files, too?

Yes, it's also a big advantage.
In LightRoom, for example, you can choose to edit a photo (from RAW or an LR file) in Photoshop. Once the modifications are complete in Photoshop, the modified file appears in the DAM as a PSD (or TIF I do not remember).
This is the kind of feature that would like to see one day in Affinity, it would be even more powerful because we would stay in Affinity, we would not switch to another software ...

If Serif does that, they will become the big boss of the market!

[Steps]

Yes, I see how this would be important. Unfortunately with digiKam I have to resign from organizing my PSDs today. Hopefully the Affinity DAM will handle APhoto file tagging as you wish. After what you wrote I kind of expect that now.

I took a quick look at the Luminar Trial to get an idea what we are talking about. It kind of reminds me of DxO Optics Pro.

It's one of the rate tools that have a good crop tool usability. I find most tools lacking here. Affinity Photo is also very basic on this matter and unfortunately the roadmap contains no mention at improving the crop tool.

Other than the well done crop tool I see no benefit in Luminar. The photo retouching functions are a joke compared to competitors like DxO PhotoLab. With Instagram you can have all it does for free and they want 70€. This makes no sense to me, sorry.

Disclaimer: I'm a bit confused that the trial I downloaded says it's "Luminar 2018" but the buy button offers me "Luminar 3". So the DAM part is missing here. Maybe they still do not have a trial for Luminar 3 ready. Don't know. Confusing... will delete.

[TomM1]

The Luminar 3 "library" is not that great.

[Steps]

14 hours ago, TomM1 said:

The Luminar 3 "library" is not that great.

I just saw a review video on YouTube.

Luminar 3 doesn't look to me like a real competitor to anything.

I can't to see how @axoloth thinks Affinity lost a match.

DxO Photolab is more advanced.

But for a DAM Affinity will have to match digiKam.

[Zabalint]

There are 2 things I don't like in Lightroom. One of them is the extreme high subscription price (10 dollars = 14,5 dollars in my country), and the other one is that it tries to force me the DAM, while I like to manage my pictures in normal folders.

However I'm missing the possibility to save raw adjustments in Affinity Photo.

[hifred]

37 minutes ago, Zabalint said:

(Lightroom) tries to force me the DAM, while I like to manage my pictures in normal folders. 

If you don't like that but are a Cloud Subsciber you can use Photoshop + ACR for RAW processing. It's exactly the same engine as in Lightroom and works without a catalogue.

[Zabalint]

1 hour ago, hifred said:

If you don't like that but are a Cloud Subsciber you can use Photoshop + ACR for RAW processing. It's exactly the same engine as in Lightroom and works without a catalogue.

Yes, you can, but the subscription that includes Photoshop (and Lightroom Classic) doesn't include a 1 TB cloud, or the one that includes it costs even more. Another possibility is to buy Photoshop Elements, however that's also much more expensive than Affinity Photo, and it has limited functionalities.

[hifred]

31 minutes ago, Zabalint said:

the subscription that includes Photoshop (and Lightroom Classic) doesn't include a 1 TB cloud, or the one that includes it costs even more

(I'm still using CS6) So one no more can simply store files locally with Lightroom (without touching the Cloud Storage quota?).
 

[RayCJ]

 A couple months ago, I first started doing digital image processing.   Adobe's subscription-based service was a show-stopper.   I started using Corel's Paintshop and Aftershot.  It confused and frustrated me.   I had to switch back & forth between two tools -and then came the integration bugs (which I won't discuss unless someone wants to hear about them).  Corel's integrated file/image management feature was a bloated monster that created all kinds of confusion about which images existed and where they truly resided.

Yes, they got their money out of me by making me purchase 2 packages by cleverly distributing key features across 2 products.  The joke is on them because the cost of maintaining two "similar-but-different" software products will give me the last laugh.  FWIW, I'm retired from product development (mainly software) after 42 years earning my living from it.

Affinity is on the right track for now, sticking with it's core strengths.  If they want to integrate an efficient cataloging feature as a front-end, that would be fine.  IMO, it should just be a file/folder manager capable of invoking the Photo or Designer tool.  The instant they incorporate editing/manipulating features directly into the file manger, they take the first step on the slippery slope of doom (been there, done that).

I hope Affinity is able to keep their Photo tool concise and effective.  That will be a difficult job.  Hint:  Teaching the theory of how to use the key features, rather than adding preset buttons to do everything, is the secret ingredient.

 

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”   -Antoine de Saint-Expuery

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”  -Leonardo Da Vinci

 

Ray

 

PS:  I have constructive thoughts about the training videos on YouTube and will share once I find the appropriate forum.

[Steps]

41 minutes ago, RayCJ said:

  I started using Corel's Paintshop and Aftershot.  It confused and frustrated me.   I had to switch back & forth between two tools -and then came the integration bugs (which I won't discuss unless someone wants to hear about them). 

You forgot to mention that PSP is also incredible slow and low performant in direct comparison to Photoshop Elements and Affinity Photo. 

What "integration bugs" do you mean?

[hifred]

1 hour ago, RayCJ said:

The instant they incorporate editing/manipulating features directly into the file manger, they take the first step on the slippery slope of doom (been there, done that).

In my opinion exactly that ist the only way to attract users who edit RAW files not just on occasion – but regularly and in great volumes.
The question, I think is rather how seamless the transfer between RAW processor and the layer based compositing app  is. Maybe Corel didn't do a good job with Aftershot and PSP but I can say that the same task works  very well with ACR and Photoshop.

[RayCJ]

49 minutes ago, Steps said:

You forgot to mention that PSP is also incredible slow and low performant in direct comparison to Photoshop Elements and Affinity Photo. 

What "integration bugs" do you mean?

 

When going from one tool to the other, which often required converting a particular image to different file types (such as JPG, TIFF etc) the EXIF data would get damaged.  Sometimes, pure rubbish would be introduced into the EXIF data, sometimes the fields would get merged etc...

Also, the same image, viewed under the same level of magnification, sometimes did not render with the same clarity between the two tools.   The colors were the same but, there was noticeable differences in image detail and clarity.  I found numerous other minor and moderate bugs in the Corel software -but they were just normal (less annoying) software issues.

Anyhow, the flaws with the EXIF data was a real turn-off for me leading me to discover Affinity.

So far, I've only found one technical flaw with Affinity which I cannot reproduce at the moment.

All programs have bugs, strong points and weak points.   Right now, Affinity has fewer bugs and more strong points than weak points. 

 

Ray

Edited January 26, 2019 by RayCJ
fix word flub.

[RayCJ]

2 minutes ago, hifred said:

In my opinion exactly that ist the only way to attract users who edit RAW files not just on occasion – but regularly and in great volumes.
The question I think is rather how seamless the transfer between RAW processor and the layer based compositing app  is. Maybe Corel didn't do a good job with Aftershot and PSP but I can say that the same task works  very well with ACR and Photoshop.

Here is a comparison:   I presume you are you familiar with "Swiss Army Knives".  The are big cumbersome pocket knives with a great many blades that serve different features.  They have screwdrivers, toothpicks, tweezers, combs, spoons, forks -and all kinds of individually useful things -that are packaged in a way to make them unusable.  

I hope that does not happen to Affinity.

 

Ray

[hifred]

11 minutes ago, RayCJ said:

They have screwdrivers, toothpicks, tweezers, combs, spoons, forks -and all kinds of individually useful things -that are packaged in a way to make them unusable.  

Well, I was talking about a well functioning bridge between two programs (in the way one also brings Affinity Photo files into Publisher).
RAW processing within a DAM is broadly established, and popular apps of that kind aren't excactly known for being complex or even bloated.
 

 

[Steps]

To repeat: Affinity did not lost a match against Luminar. This is nonsense.