Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Remaining development time


Recommended Posts

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.

Well, that must be nice.

 

I have been through many many product cycles and deliveries were almost always date driven. The defining philosophy has almost always been "given enough time nothing would ever be delivered" and there was almost always a "drop dead date". On top of that I have seen projects die simply because they did not, and could not, meet their "drop dead date". One of my main concerns all along has been that someone would pull the plug on what looks like it is going to be a wonderful pixel editor just because it was going to miss a delivery date and I would be back trying to decide if I wanted to use Photoshop CC at all.

 

Thanks for the info.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Affinity is here for the long haul, so if a feature is distracting from what's deemed more important then the team know it can make it in a free update instead. And be in the customer beta before the next update. Win win? Hopefully!

Twitter: @Writer_Dale
Affinity apps run on: Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, GTX1650 Super

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

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.**

 

Boy, it's pretty black and white to me. 

 

The subscription model is about rents. Adobe wants your money forever no matter what they do. If they can just convince us that renting makes sense, they don't have to lift a finger again. That's not strictly true. They have to do some minimum effort. Or maybe they make just slow progress.

 

The competitive model is a great one in that it forces a company to create compelling new functionality in order to earn our money. It's a constant sword over their head that reminds them that they cannot simply rest on their laurels.

 

Once you start renting your software and renting your car and renting your music and renting your movies and renting your house and renting your book and renting your magazines...pretty soon there's no money left. This is an expensive way to live.

 

And think about this...companies are desperate for us to rent because it makes them lots more money for less effort. Exactly why we as consumers should be against it.

 

There's a lot to be said for buying what you need when you can afford it and then just keeping it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

PhotoPete,

 

I'm looking for software to help me manage and edit my photos. Aperture, while not perfect, did a lot of what I wanted and I was pretty happy with it. Photos, for now, looks like a big step back with the possible exception of the better cloud support. 

 

I have to say that I worry about Affinity Photo without a way to manage, display, and archive my photos. Once I settle on some piece of software that does this, most of my editing will be done there. The effort cost to use Affinity goes way up when I have to export, edit, then re-import. 

 

It seems that Affinity is focussing on being Photoshop, but Photoshop has had Lightroom for quite some time now. Without this component, it will be harder for them to compete. 

 

While I believe that Affinity can probably handle the database part of this problem, I'm not as sure they can provide a comprehensive cloud solution. Apple has a staggering amount of money in this and they have a huge head start.

 

It's why I suspect the best future for Affinity Photo is to fully integrate with Apple Photos. And this assumes both that Photos will continue to improve and that Apple intends to leave the photo editing to third parties instead of developing it all themselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@mes2600

 

If you read the various Apple/Mac boards there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the way Apple has handled its cloud services over the years (remember Mobile Me anyone?) and Photos is no exception.   Also it is not a universal truth that a comprehensive cloud solution is what people want - some do, some don't, and for those that do, there are a lot of options out there.   

 

The big push/selling point of Photos is its ability to sync all your Apple devices to the iCloud Photo Library, not the fact that it offers Cloud storage.  It does seem to be an adequate replacement for iPhoto but is a bad joke if it was ever intended to replace Aperture.

 

Those who are serious enough about their photography to be participants in the Affinity Photo beta program and who don't need/want the multi device sync capability do require a decent asset manager.  Right now that gives us 4 or 5 choices (including make your own based on Apple's Pictures).  Overall, however, there does not seem to be an answer that combines good quality editing, effective and easy to use asset management, simple workflow, and an appealing pricing basis.

 

Affinity make no bones about their aim of AP being a top class editor, and that is where their priorities lie at this time, but from staff posts here it seems that a DAM is very much in their thoughts.  Which will be nice when it happens ...

Retina iMac (4K display, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM) OS X 10.11.6  Capture One 10.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don´t think cloud sync for an entire Photo library I key to most people.

IMHO syncing Brushes and Color Paneles over iCloud would be pretty cool and absolutely enough.

In the future this could also include an iPad Version which I think is definitely going to arrive at some date.

 

Thinking of DAMs: I´m not a big fan of complex DAMs as I´ve said before here:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/5336-file-system/?p=34539

 

Hopefully they will come up with an easy solution soon and build on top of that. (my personal opinion)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

Boy, it's pretty black and white to me. 

 

The subscription model is about rents. Adobe wants your money forever no matter what they do. If they can just convince us that renting makes sense, they don't have to lift a finger again. That's not strictly true. They have to do some minimum effort. Or maybe they make just slow progress.

 

The competitive model is a great one in that it forces a company to create compelling new functionality in order to earn our money. It's a constant sword over their head that reminds them that they cannot simply rest on their laurels.

 

Once you start renting your software and renting your car and renting your music and renting your movies and renting your house and renting your book and renting your magazines...pretty soon there's no money left. This is an expensive way to live.

 

And think about this...companies are desperate for us to rent because it makes them lots more money for less effort. Exactly why we as consumers should be against it.

 

There's a lot to be said for buying what you need when you can afford it and then just keeping it.

Not sure I agree entirely with that. Currently I use Creative Cloud (photography). I get regular updates and some nice apps for around £8 per month. If you look at the price of software such as On One and remember that they upgrade each year at a cost to the user (how else would they make income) then I am not in a bad place. Adobe rents and provides regular free updates/upgrades as part of the deal whilst On One and others sell and maintain the income stream by issuing paid for upgrades. Not so different really. I have purchased AP as given its current pricing it might just make a viable alternative to Creative Cloud - time will tell but they clearly are working very hard on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure I agree entirely with that. Currently I use Creative Cloud (photography). I get regular updates and some nice apps for around £8 per month. If you look at the price of software such as On One and remember that they upgrade each year at a cost to the user (how else would they make income) then I am not in a bad place. Adobe rents and provides regular free updates/upgrades as part of the deal whilst On One and others sell and maintain the income stream by issuing paid for upgrades. Not so different really. I have purchased AP as given its current pricing it might just make a viable alternative to Creative Cloud - time will tell but they clearly are working very hard on it.

The subscription/purchase discussion has been a hot subject since Adobe announced their CC version. Personally I prefer the purchase option for a couple of reasons - I already had the base products and the upgrade cost was not that much when compared to someone who would have to buy the initial product at a much higher price and I was not sure that I wanted to continue to upgrade yearly. That is, I thought that at some point I would stop upgrading and be able to keep and use the (purchased) apps that I already had. I could not do that with the subscription.

 

However, having said that, the truth is that deciding to keep your purchased products and continue using them also implies that you intend to keep your OS and other products and not upgrade them since an OS upgrade could easily cause your purchased products to stop working. Thus, in a sense, stopping and keeping an existing product like Photoshop implies the freezing of your entire system. If not now, then sometime in the future.

 

The subject is a bit complex and, I think, people are more driven by their fears (Adobe is going to raise the monthly fee to something I can not pay and then I will have to buy the product or find an alternative) than by a simple analysis of their options. While I think that my decision to not move to the subscription model was right in that I now have replaced PS with Affinity Photo and I have a purchased copy of Lightroom. Since I use LR very little I think my decision was right for me, but I sometimes think that others who decide to stay on the purchase model may not be thinking of the consequences down the road.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Travelling Man

 

Mike from Mesa is correct when he mentions that this has been a hot subject since Adobe went "CC".  The more I read about it the more it strikes me as a personal decision with no absolute and objective data to say purchase is "better" than rent or vice versa.  For one thing, it will depend on what constitutes "better" for each person.   I now use Capture One as my DAM and main editing app, with AP as the external editor.  Capture One is, as far as I know, the only photo app that makes it clear from the outset that it can be purchased outright or on a subscription basis.  I opted for the outright on the basis that all the .X upgrades are free, and the full version upgrades can be tested on a 30 day free trial to see if the new features provide something that you want.  If there is nothing then don't pay for the upgrade; and PhaseOne (historically) have been good in that they permit an upgrade to the current version from one that is 2 full releases prior.

Retina iMac (4K display, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM) OS X 10.11.6  Capture One 10.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes.

 

As Bill says, what is "best" depends upon who is the interested party. It is easy to see how someone new to photo editing would think that a subscription price of $10 per month is a great buy for both Photoshop and Lightroom when you consider that buying them "back in the day" used to cost more than $400 on sale. So the "rental" price means more than 3 years use at a lower price than the original purchase, let alone paying for an upgrade to either or both (PS and LR).

 

As for me, dropping the subscription (which I had for one year) was a wonderful decision as CaptureOne and AP are all I really need and, the better I get with C1, the less need I have for any external editor. As it is AP does everything I need or want (except calling my plugins  ^_^ ) and the better I get an using the tools that I have the less need I have for them anyway. So it is easy for me to see two test cases, the one I mentioned first of the person new to photo editing, and the second, myself. One method suits the first and another the second.

 

And that would be true regardless, but AP just keeps adding more and more functionality and that just means more and more "free stuff" for me. The Pano functionality means that I no longer need to worry about buying Pano software and the coming HDR software will probably remove one more extra piece of software from my system. Given all of that the purchase scenario works best for me. Other people's mileage may vary.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.