Remaining development time

[Andy Somerfield]

Hi,

 

Just thought I'd spend a little time giving an update about where we are with Photo, and what we plan to use the rest of our development time for. There is no fixed "release date" for Photo - it will ship when we feel it's ready to ship. That said, I feel we are probably just over half way through development of the beta. Here's what we think we need to do before we can ship:

 

1.) Finish Photo Persona - mainly, mask and channels improvements, printing improvements and crop tool improvements. Lots of little odds and ends to clean up.

 

2.) Develop Persona - we're going to rewrite the processing engine and change the UI significantly. Most of our remaining time will be spent here.

 

3.) Photoshop Plugins - we're going to spend a lot of time improving the plugin engine, and reach out to plugin makers to help us get everything where it should be.

 

Obviously, we will always be taking on bug reports - and they will continue to get fixed as they come in. Soon though, we will stop accepting "Feature Requests" for the main Photo Persona (you can still make them, and they will still be read, but we only move things into the "Accepted" sub forum if we plan to implement them before the next full release). We'll start accepting those requests again, once the first version of the app has shipped. Photo development will be, eventually, exactly the same as Designer - a retail version of the app in the MAS, and weekly beta builds for customers containing the latest features / improvements, so even though your feature requests might stay a while longer now before they get accepted, we'll be back to accepting them the week after Photo ships.

 

That said, we often get feature requests which we consider "low hanging fruit" - ie. a useful feature which turns out to be very easy to implement. It's likely we'll still be accepting and implementing some of those throughout the remaining beta time.

 

I think we have maybe one of two weeks of work on the Photo Persona, then we'll start working on Develop :)

 

Thanks,

 

Andy.

 

 

[00Ghz]

AD and AP need advanced selection methods for items like PS/AI have. Ex: Select by same fill, same appearance, same font etc. + some quick way to navigate to the selected item in the layers panel. 

 

More shortcuts or customisable ones?

 

Both apps are getting better and better but the attention to the small details is what is very important to power users.

[MikeFromMesa]

I have to ask what this means for those items that have been submitted as bugs but never moved to the Accepted list.

 

I know I have submitted many items that I certainly consider bugs but have never made it to the Accepted List (and some which have). Should we just assume that if a bug report has not been Accepted, then it will not be addressed before the release? Or at all?

[Andy Somerfield]

Hi Mike,

 

As I said, bugs are still (and always will be) accepted and actioned - nothing is changing for bugs.

 

It's the "Feature Requests" which will not be "Accepted" as freely, as we proceed.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Andy.

[billtils]

Thanks for keeping us up to date with the plans Andy.  It's looking good!

[MikeFromMesa]

Hi Mike,

 

As I said, bugs are still (and always will be) accepted and actioned - nothing is changing for bugs.

 

It's the "Feature Requests" which will not be "Accepted" as freely, as we proceed.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Andy.

Andy,

 

Yes. I understood that your comment was concerned with Feature Requests.

 

But there are some bug reports which have been sitting in the Bug Report section since almost the first release of the Beta without ever having been moved to the Accepted List. Since they have been there so long some may have even been addressed with subsequent beta releases without ever having actually been Accepted or Rejected and it is easy to see how really old bug reports may just be consigned to some sort of limbo because no one can be certain that they are still valid, considering the releases since they were filed.

 

I guess I am asking if we should re-submit them if they are still in some sort of limbo status, or just trust that they will eventually be looked at.

[jstvnsn]

hi Andy,

 

Looks good. But, will the Macros Persona ever return ..?

 

John

[Alan9940]

Hello Andy,

 

Wow, 1 - 2 weeks estimated work left to be done on the Photo Persona? Please allow me to stress, once again, the critical importance of a proper printing UI. Unless you guys have some salvageable or plug-in ready code lying around the office, I'd think this task alone might take a week or two! AP is morphing into such a fine product with each and every beta release; it would be a serious disappointment to many (IMO) if missing and/or incomplete critical functionality renders it pretty much useless to the working digital photographer.

 

Best regards,

AlanH 

[Andy Somerfield]

Hi all,

 

The Macro persona will not debut in the initial release - it will be delivered as one of a number of free updates, post release.

 

Don't worry about the printing capabilities Alan, I now know what is required (from the other thread) - it will get done.

 

Andy.

[CarmenCo]

Hi all,

 

The Macro persona will not debut in the initial release - it will be delivered as one of a number of free updates, post release.

 

Don't worry about the printing capabilities Alan, I now know what is required (from the other thread) - it will get done.

 

Andy.

What a pity! the macro persona is one of the things I'm looking forward to

[ONSO]

Thanks for the update — looking forward to all the completions. As I have stated before in their beta stage AP, AD and soon APub are better than anything Adobe aka "Adon'tBe". We use both AD and AP almost every day in the rebranding of Lucidmoth. Honestly, we've been highly satisfied with the end result.  Please keep up the good work & thank to all involved in that work.

[csp]

so the HSL tool  will not get more advanced features and becomes comparable to the ps counterpart ?  this would be very sad because for skintone adustments this is a preferred tool for many retouchers.  i shoot and retouch a lot of portrait and people images  and i would have to stick to cc because it is indispensable for me to fine tune small skine-tone differences . 

[psaldari]

Hi Andy, thank you for this clarifications.

[mes2600]

Apple Photos is now available and Aperture is dying. 

 

Apple Photos looks like it might develop into a decent photo library browser with sync to the cloud.

 

But.

 

The image editing is very primitive.

 

The belief is that 3rd parties are going to remedy that situation soon. 

 

One has to believe that some development time might ought to be spent figuring out how to bring the power of Affinity Photo to Apple Photos. This could be a big win for everybody.

[billtils]

For serious Aperture users, the overwhelming consensus is that Apple Photos sucks and will continue to suck.  But not too bad if you are an iPhone picture snapper and stay well away from the iCloud storage "function".

[mes2600]

For serious Aperture users, the overwhelming consensus is that Apple Photos sucks and will continue to suck.  But not too bad if you are an iPhone picture snapper and stay well away from the iCloud storage "function".

That was the original consensus on Final Cut Pro X too. 

 

I understand that if you are a professional photographer and take hundreds of photos a day, that Apple Photos is probably not for you (at least right now). But that's a fairly small market. And there is a lot of room between "iPhone picture snapper" and professional photographer. 

 

I don't know why Apple is discontinuing Aperture. My guess is that the underlying software architecture had some problems and they decided to start again.

 

We also don't know is what Apple intends to do with it. They might transition it to a tool that actually replaces Aperture over the next few releases. Or they may have completely abandoned the professional and semiprofessional market altogether.

 

My guess is that Apple will focus on the underlying photo catalog/browser/cloud functionality and will open up Photos for third party editing. This might get them somewhere useful over the next year or two.

 

In the meantime, there seems to be nowhere else to go. Aperture WILL die. So far, Capture One is not doing it for me. And I have no interest in renting Lightroom forever. 

 

If it is the case that Photos is opened up and Affinity is not there, I can imagine that it will impact their bottom line. If I ran Affinity I'd be looking very closely at this opportunity.

[MikeFromMesa]

And I have no interest in renting Lightroom forever. 

 

Are you making the assumption that Lightroom, which is currently also being sold as a licensed software, will become subscription only? Adobe has said that will will remain as a licensed product.

[billtils]

@mes2600

 

Welcome to the AP beta forum!

 

I used pre-"X" FCP and was a somewhat sad when it was dumped for FCPX.  However, there has been a fair bit of development of FCPX and it is now quite nice (or perhaps I just got used to it).  So why don't I think Apple will develop Photos to the point where it is about good enough to replace Aperture?  Two reasons:  first of all, FCP has coexisted with iMovie for years and both have been updated from time to time.  That is in stark contrast with Aperture/Photos.  The second reason is how the iPhone has taken off as a point and shoot camera - currently ranked number 1 camera in the Flickr community.  Add the iCloud storage money-maker and there are very sound business reasons for Apple to come up with Photos as an integral part of its iOS, and serve up an OS X version as part of its one world strategy.  But one gets the feeling that everywhere else, Apple is going to consolidate its activities as a hardware and OS company, with third party developers writing software to peddle in the MAS and App stores.  Which leaves FCP as something of an anomaly and dumping Aperture as inevitable.  (The "App Store Model" is very clever - people give you money to let them create software that is better than you could have done yourself at some cost).

 

However, this is the Affinity Photo forum, not the Apple grievance one, and I would agree with what you say about opportunities, Capture 1 (some nice things but overall did not make it for me either), and Lightroom rental.

 

If you scan through the various staff and moderator posts there are lots of indications that Affinity is aware of the opportunities out there, but is taking a very sensible one step at a time approach, the first step being the release AP as a first class editing app.  I'll stick with Aperture as my DAM, AP as my editor, and my fingers crossed for Affinity to come up with their DAM before Apple comes up with OS X 11 (or whatever version won't play nice with Aperture). 

[billtils]

Hi Mike

 

 

Yes indeed they have said that but the question is "remain" for how long?   When I went to try out LR, it was a devil of a job finding the purchase option, which didn't fill me with confidence that purchase was a good idea.   Adobe are certainly not shouting "It's OK, buy me and be happy for evermore" from the rooftops, which makes me wonder what will happen to the upgrade path on the bought -v- rented versions.  

 

It may come down to how much competition there is (  ;) )

[PhotoPete]

In the meantime, there seems to be nowhere else to go. Aperture WILL die. So far, Capture One is not doing it for me. And I have no interest in renting Lightroom forever. 

 

I've posted my thoughts on this in the feature request board: DAM / Aperture replacement

 

It might be interesting for you to read and I'd love to get some +1 for this request. Might encourage the Affinity team to evaluate what is possible.

 

Pete

[MikeFromMesa]

Yes indeed they have said that but the question is "remain" for how long?   When I went to try out LR, it was a devil of a job finding the purchase option, which didn't fill me with confidence that purchase was a good idea.   Adobe are certainly not shouting "It's OK, buy me and be happy for evermore" from the rooftops, which makes me wonder what will happen to the upgrade path on the bought -v- rented versions.  

 

It may come down to how much competition there is (  ;) )

Hi Bill,

 

I, of course, have no inside information and, since my last copy of LR was LR4, am not current on their plans nor paying much attention. However the subscription model appears to be spreading and I would prefer to not have to believe that all subscription model software will become only subscription model. Perhaps that is wishful thinking, but it would not be the first time in my life that I have engaged in that ...   :)

 

CaptureOne, which I know does not suit your needs, also has a subscription model and I suspect that will be the new draw for a lot of people. If that turns out to be general I guess I will stop upgrading my software at the last perpetual license version and just see how long I can go that way.

 

I personally think Lightroom is OK - reasonably functional and stable and containing almost all of the functionality I would need, but I have chosen to move away from Adobe because I dislike the subscription model and, for me, "moving away" pretty much means no usage at all, at least of their photo software.

[billtils]

Hi Mike

 

Yes, it's not black and white re the subscription model in principle.  It is probably a good way to go not only for the vendors but also for their customers who are perpetual upgraders.  Personally I'm a bit in the "if it ain't broke" camp but that only works as long as the S/W is still working too.  That way you only need to pay if and when you decide that there is something in the latest version that is worth shelling out for.**

 

Regards

 

Bill 

 

** Like a DAM module for AP perhaps  :)

[Diller]

 

The Macro persona will not debut in the initial release - it will be delivered as one of a number of free updates, post release.

 

 

Yikes. I consider actions/macro functionality a core feature of professional photo editing software. I hope it's not too long off because I could never function without automation in my workflow. 

 

Nevertheless, I'm wishing you good luck with your launch.

[MikeFromMesa]

Yikes. I consider actions/macro functionality a core feature of professional photo editing software. I hope it's not too long off because I could never function without automation in my workflow. 

 

I assume that they have some date set by Serif for launch and have decided that there is insufficient time to get a properly working version of the macro persona ready by that date. If that is right, then, from long experience doing software development, I know exactly the pressures they are under for the release and understand completely why they might have come to such a decision.

 

Personally I would rather have the version without the macro persona, but with the other core functionality working properly, than have the version with the macro persona but with much other functionality still buggy. I would also like the automation ability, but I can wait. Perhaps your needs are more pressing.

[Dale]

Hoping it's OK for me to say this.... it'll disappear if not!

 

We're in a great position with devs that have far more autonomy than most. It's their call with the head of dev what to add/pull/prioritise, when to submit to Apple etc—and of course they would rather have everything in the app too but then it'd would never get released at all (because perfection is unachievable!) :)  It means they have tough decisions and cannot please everyone, but it also means they are working harder than the average dev to produce something very special. Just so you know, it's rather refreshingly not a financial or sales director making the calls in team Affinity.