Affinity will fail - Harald Heim

[John Rostron]

According to Harald Heim, of the Plugin Site Newsletter:

Quote

 

Adobe is the big giant in the image software business. No other company has a chance to overtake it. Corel and Jasc, which probably had the best chance, did not manage to do it in 25 years. Macromedia merged with Adobe, and Affinity will fail.

 

Thought you would like to know, but I am holding on here.

John

[R C-R]

"Overtaking" Adobe is not necessary for Affinity to avoid failing, so I will put about as much faith in this "will fail" prediction as I would in reading tea leaves.

[John Rostron]

Perhaps my title is misleading. What Heim is saying is that Affinity will fail to overtake Adobe.

John

[SrPx]

Another April Fool's ?

In case not, well, even several of the Serif staff members here have stated that Affinity Photo (for example) is not a Photoshop replacement (it would be for me, if I wasn't already so due to using CSP and others... since very long.)  At the companies, it will be slow, as pipelines built over decades wont be replaced too fast. For the kind of money they have, and mostly what they get and will get from other bigger and less known venues, Adobe is practically unbeatable. Still, they also have these very particular ways of doing things which will keep feeding steadily several competitors. Among those, the ones setting high price tags wont really compete with massive numbers of users. Neither those picking only very specific niches while Adobe covers many professional fields (IMO, so does Affinity). Indeed, worded like that, if is not another April Fool's, I read between the lines more of a "desire" of it for failing. Sometimes this is just a paid opinion, by whoever, other times is a sincere desire of the writer, in most cases fearing competition as one is afraid that the tool (/s) they learnt to use for so many years, would stop being the standard, and then having to learn other tools. Or simply generated empathy for being their tool (as in  "my soccer team", "my neighborhood", etc. Not so much seeing the advantages of a new take, new tech, way lower price and no subscription).

I stopped playing too much attention to articles like that since a while (again, if is not just the boring usual joke).

Overtaking is also a funny term for me. If a tool, Like Affinity Photo, as is doing right now, is having 99.9% of all what I need for WORK, well, call it however. It's replacing actively a bunch (not just one) of other tools. Same with Designer. And with Publisher, it wont replace anything as I don't do that sort of thing (but will buy it).

About Jasc, WELL....the lack of proper CMYK support, and certain issue with internal conversion of sRGB did keep me from buying it for a while, despite  recognizing it had a great UI and great functionality in the old days, and, yet pretty good today. Corel is GREAT. But ouch, the price tag.

EDIT : I have had very recently the very pleasant surprise of finding a pair of local job offers, different companies : "- Familiarity with Adobe suite OR Affinity from Serif" . Just like you see in many, since always, that also allow the CD alternative.

[LarrySunshine]

This is completely bias and shockingly ignorant. There is no need to "overtake" anything. If Affinity plays right, it WILL be used by many professionals. Simple.

[jmwellborn]

3 hours ago, John Rostron said:

According to Harald Helm, of the Plugin Site Newsletter:

Thought you would like to know, but I am holding on here.

John

Or conceivably, Harald had a motive for writing that, as in a possible little advertising motivation on the side?    Adobe isn’t going to give up gracefully as hundreds of thousands of people gradually ditch their indenture to the subscription model.    Anybody know who pays to keep Harald’s website up and running?    I haven’t a clue and don’t want to.   I dumped Adobe several years ago when my Adobe ID and password got hacked along with millions of others.   Not an overwhelming advertisement!

[firstdefence]

You know you have them scared when the lodge try to scaremonger.

[AffinityJules]

Who knows the future of photo editing or the course each particular company creating editing software will take?

Well no one really but Affinity has grown considerably since its inception and will continue to grow.

Just as a side issue: I actually got that newsletter to and decided to try the latest free plugin. It didn't work in Affinity which would suggest that only software for Adobe is being developed?

[John Rostron]

4 minutes ago, AffinityJules said:

Just as a side issue: I actually got that newsletter to and decided to try the latest free plugin. It didn't work in Affinity which would suggest that only software for Adobe is being developed?

Some filters from the Plugin Site do work (or used to work) in AP, which is why I still subscribe.

John

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

Anybody know who pays to keep Harald’s website up and running?

Got a link to that website? I tried searching using various terms but didn't get any relevant hits, possibly because "helm" so frequently appears in a different context in web searches.

[John Rostron]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Got a link to that website?

Here it is: https://thepluginsite.com

I did a search on ""The plugin site".

John

[Fred C]

More specific:

https://thepluginsite.com/news/issues/mar2019.htm

[Move Along People]

-

[R C-R]

37 minutes ago, haakoo said:

Looks like a bias,not relevant opinion.

From the "About The Plugin Site" webpage, it seems to me that there may be a strong bias for promoting & selling Photoshop-compatible plugins made by a very small company with a full time "crew" of just Harald & Miriam Heim.

[jmwellborn]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

From the "About The Plugin Site" webpage, it seems to me that there may be a strong bias for promoting & selling Photoshop-compatible plugins made by a very small company with a full time "crew" of just Harald & Miriam Heim.

Thought so!   Although I didn’t bother to look them up.   Good sleuthing job, R-C-R!!

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

Good sleuthing job, R-C-R!!

Without the links from @John Rostron & @Fred C I would not have gotten anywhere with that, so the credit should go to them.

[emmrecs01]

Quote

Some filters from the Plugin Site do work (or used to work) in AP

Indeed they do, still.  I'm not seeking to defend Harald Heim (I think his views are slightly at odds with the fact that he advertises that at least some of his plug-ins work with Aff Photo) but I have a number of his Photo Wiz plug-ins installed and working with both the latest release and beta versions.

Jeff

[firstdefence]

I think the post worked to his gain, any attention is better than no attention in WWW. The last time I looked I didn't see Serif-finger sat in a plush chair stroking a fat white cat, hell-bent on world domination. "Affinity will fail" is a very general statement and quite honestly a bit childish, it smacks of a cry for attention.

The subscription base is just the corps way of enslaving the workforce and most if not all businesses will want to adopt this model - It's all about control, a never-ending revenue stream, subscribe and forget about them, that's just what they want.

[photophart]

There used to be a gigantic retailer that owned the world. It couldn't be beaten. It couldn't be stopped. It ruled the retail landscape for decades. It was called Sears. Nothing lasts forever.  Not even Adobe.