Affinity Photo for Windows now available, Mac version updated to 1.5

Royal Air Force.

RAF is the RAW version of Fujifilm X series.
Usage of the compressed RAW is the problem here.

It was no problem using them in Lightroom.
After the update of Affinity Photo this problem occured, so I fully make Affinity responsible for this fact.

Why can't I expect a company to give me free updates forever? It's only normal and moral. They can make more money by selling new licenses to new people.

Microsoft and Apple do just that.

Free updates, paid upgrades. Or if its Adobe you just pay all the time.

Cheap and broken. And bad.

@DeathArrow, When something is broken for me and isn't broken for most people, I usually start looking at how I am using it. Because 99% of the time, the problem lies there.

=> Glen
Masking with Wacom tablet (36Mpix file, 10+ layers) led to unexpected shut-downs of Affinity Photo program (4 times until now). System is very capable: i7-6700K@4.2GHz, 32Gb RAM 2300, Quadro K1200, Win 10 Pro.
Never had any issue with PS (price-wise it explains)

This sounds like Serif Photoplus, also completely undermined by annoying limitations, poor implementation and bugs. Despite it's support for real nested layers, non-destructive layer adjustments and many other high-level features, it's unusable and I have ended up using the crude Gimp instead.

=> curio77
Well, there is something wrong in your proposal. I paid money for the program, I spent my time struggling with it, and now I should spend some more time sending them a report about bugs in their program. So that they could correct their own mistakes and then they could get more money from me next time with a new release? Something is really wrong in this logic. :-)
In fact I can't care less about Affinity Photo and its functionality. The price was small enough not to bother with a refund. I might buy a new release if is good or I would forget about AP forever.

Sorry you're having problems Alex. Rest assured that if you post in our forums describing an issue with the current version of the app, our developers will endeavour to put it right immediately - not to sell back to you in a future version (we're just not that cynical). Unless you're aware of an amazing software somewhere that never has any bugs or glitches, it's always the case that users will discover things that developers haven't, even in an extensive public beta as there was with Affinity Photo. Of course the only way to guarantee a particular problem never gets solved, though, is if no-one tells us about it.

=>razadaz
I agree with you. Bugs are there whatever efforts were done. I just don't want to pay for product and then to take a burden for debugging it. A principle 'you help us and you get new release free' might probably work, but 'you pay, you help, you pay again' - definitely not. That is why I don't want to be involved in resolving AP's problems.
As for the ver.1 release - I agree with you again. AP is a surprisingly mature software for a first release and developers team deserves a lot of respect. It is just a little bit not up to my personal demands yet. I am sure, though, it WILL BE quite soon (if not sold to Adobe for huge lot of money).

It's inevitable that some people will be critical. People slam cameras all the time after reading just three lines of a product announcement.

While it will have its issues, it's not intended as a product for everyone. For those who use its many features, I think the product is great and has a bright future.

It has so many similarities to Photoshop (and strong compatibility with Adobe file formats) that most people should be pleasantly surprised at how smooth a transition can be.

However, I've seen people criticise it because it does more than they need it to do. The same people would criticise Formula 1 cars for being too fast.

Some people, for reasons I can't quite fathom, are rather heavily emotionally invested in paying rent to Adobe. I am equally as heavily invested in not doing so if I can help it.

"No, it can’t make toast, change light bulbs, or fix your car,...."
And neither can Photoshop! ;-)

So why bother if it's worse than Photoshop? I'd rather donate to charities.

If you dont want to pay for PS, you can buy Paint Shop Pro which is better than Affinity or use Gimp which is both better and free.

Don't use Photoshop and you'll have more to donate to charity

Gimp is "both better and free"? I agree with the last statement, but better? I hadn't used Gimp in quite a while, so I just downloaded the latest version. It definitely has progressed/matured, but I certainly wouldn't rate it higher than AP. It depends on what you use it for I suppose, but upon some quick experimenting I found out that Gimp still doesn't support adjustment layers (as far as I can see), no concept of text styles/effects, no quick selection tool, no refine edge tools (I know there are different ways of accomplishing it, but to me it feels more complicated)....For some folks this may be fine, but for me it is too much of a hassle. Not saying it's not a good program (b/c it is), but for *my purposes* AP is a much better fit (and I prefer the GUI).

I know several people who are now using Affinity and feel that, for them, it's better than Photoshop. For the projects on which I have used it, I would have to agree.

Most people don't use anything close to the full feature set of Photoshop. And they won't use Affinity to its full potential either. What I see in Affinity is, not only a comparable set of features, but also a leaning towards smarter ways of doing things.

It must be difficult for Adobe to keep pressing on with updates for products that they are getting paid for through subscription, regardless of what they add to them. They have some good products, but over the past few years, most of the "innovation" is about technologies to tie the customer into the Adobe ecosystem.

When Adobe trumpets an update that makes it easier to use their "cloud" based licensing, i see a win for Adobe, not me.

Gimp isn't an experience I want to try again ;-) I don't care if it's free. Wasted time costs me money.

Vik2012: Interesting what you say about people preferring Affinity to Photoshop. I have worked with Photoshop for so long the transition is painful, but I feel it needs to be done. I cannot envisage a future of having to work with a subscription paid application that can be switched off at their discretion. Again, GIMP, great respect for those who work on the GIMP project and for those who produce quality work with it, but unfortunately I also find it uncomfortable to work with.

As it costs less than three months of Photoshop CC in my area, I'd say the value of the expense depends on how long you plan to live. Having limited means is one of the best reasons to avoid renting your software, particularly if you don't need all the more complex bells and whistles for professional reasons.

Affinity already has Photo and Designer. Publisher, has been announced, and will be available next year. They are already talking about Database, but with no timeline.

If it get in the way of Adobe - Then Adobe will buy Affinity.
Its a simple fact that Adobe dislikes any true competition and just buys them if they become a thread.

Adobe has done it before and I am sure they have no problem doing it again.

You can use Google Nik Collection plugins now with this new version. It has a very nice noise reduction plugin.

razadaz but far from the same thing.

Stu 5
why? Once you have exported as TIFF you can continue to work with that TIFF and simply save as you would in photoshop. In practice the only difference is using the "export as" command rather than the "save as" command to initially change the format.

Hey!

Actually, Affinity can open a layered Tiff and "Save" as tiff as well. Which good for DAM integration. Especially when you open the tiff from your DAM.

However, for other document, using "export" instead of "Save As.." is not so smart. Because you would have to: do your stuff, "Export as Tiff", close the file, open the exported Tiff... So you can afterwards just "Save.."

Regards

Exactly my point NicoPPC. Exporting is not the same as Save as.

Well, for me that is a moot point. I don't think very much of the Affinity raw development. I will probably use ACDSee Ultimate 10 for that and send a tif to Affinity anyway.

If you have photoshop installed you can simply add the photoshop plugin folder to affinity under preferences- plugins-add.

Scroll to the bottom of this page for info about a future digital asset manager (DAM) from Affinity: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/about/

Unless you use both it is very difficult to say. However, it doesn’t require activation like Corel products, you can install it on as many computers as you like as many times as you like providing they are all your own PCs.

I had the same experience, but as the Vimeo video shows, there's a better way to deal with under/over exposure. I didn't realize this so thanks to @cdembrey for that.

Please also have a look at videos like this one: https://vimeo.com/173026121

There are much better ways of making the most of your camera's tonal range in Photo - if you take the tone curve off and compress the highlights, you get so much more flexibility.

@YA9Productions, Over the years I have tested virtually all of the major RAW processing applications out there. I found the best results came from Capture One Pro and Capture NX.

While Capture NX understandably produced excellent results, given Nikon's development involvement, the differences between it and Capture One were negligible. But, Capture NX was a horrible piece of software, while Capture One was excellent (in my opinion). So, the choice was easy in the end.

I wasn't a fan of what Lightroom (ACR) did to Nikon RAW files.

I will test Affinity Photo 1.5 on some Nikon NEF's too out of curiosity.

Oookay - if the choice of music in an ad completely shapes your opinion of a product, then you may want to seek help.

Their first ad for Affinity Photo (1.0 for Mac) on Vimeo and Youtube contains the song "Go!" from the critically acclaimed album "The Race for Space" by British band Public Service Broadcasting. Maybe that is more to your taste?

Frank, if you're asking what the software does, have you read the article above? I've already mentioned the vast amount of tutorials available which highlight specific features. Yes, it handles raw files, it has an entire development workspace dedicated to handling raw imagery.

For anyone interested, here is the complete feature list: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/full-feature-list/

Not serious? Presumably Adobe Photoshop is not serious enough for you also. Try reading some online reviews.

I have heard back in 1981 that you can mute the sound on a computer. But that required knowing some commands!!!
That feature might be still implemented on your much newer machine, but may require a mouse click though!!! A bit of a complex operation.

Frank, just in case you are being serious, I'd recommend that you read the available details on the app if you want to find out what it does.

There is no music to offend you when you read the details they have written to explain the product.

If we all made purchase decisions based on the choice of marketing music, we'd avoid banks, grocery stores, cars, holidays, and so on. So, take the grumpy hat off and take a look at the software.

Frank, one of the first pieces of information on their site says "Comprehensive RAW editing. Develop camera RAW files in a dedicated built-in workspace with all the processing adjustments and corrections you need."

When you scroll down a little, there is an entire panel devoted to RAW. It has a heading that says "Dedicated RAW editing workspace. Compatible with all major camera file formats, the Develop persona offers a dedicated processing workspace offering incredibly accurate editing in an unbounded linear color space."

In the "What's New" section, it says "Overhauled RAW engine for improved results out the box, along with over 70 new RAW camera formats supported."

So, my guess is that it does work with RAW.

And I read all this without hearing a single note of music. ;-)

You just have to tell them that you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

Frank, if you're not prepared to put any effort into researching software before you potentially buy it then I don't know what to say.

If I'm interested in software the first thing I do is open up a blank tab and google for it - most software, and Affinity is no exception, will provide you with an abridged marketing versions of its key features, and then a more comprehensive rundown on a separate page should you wish to read more.

Now, there is already a full feature list linked to in an above post, plus here is a link to (currently) 165 video tutorials that demonstrate what the software can do: http://affinity.co/PhotoVids - they don't have music, so you hopefully won't be too offended by them.

This article, and Affinity's press release, has had to balance two things: the launch on Windows, and the huge new list of features in 1.5. I hope you're able to at least look at a features page to see if the software interests you or not.

Thanks,
James

The product developers don't post the information on this site. So, if it is short on details, don't blame them. Same with cameras and other gear.

Anyway, one of the first rules of the internet is to NEVER install software when you don't know and trust the source. DPR are obviously not the product source, so you need to check these products out on the developer's site.

Ask a child or grandchild to type Google into your browser. Don't worry, they'll know what to do from there and have you on the developer's site in 3 seconds flat. You're welcome ;-)

Too bad they alienated some customers, they will learn over time.... or maybe not.

Maybe that is their clever plan. I know which customers I would want to "alienate" if I was them.

Frank, they have more than enough customers and are growing quickly. Just because you are too lazy to do any kind of research on a product you may potentially be interested in doesn't mean everyone else is.

Unusual sale technique

Photo uses its own raw engine - on Mac however you also have the choice of using Core Image RAW should you prefer the results.

You can set it through the Develop Assistant - see this video at 0:46 where I click on the tuxedo icon. It's the top option: https://vimeo.com/192599184

However does it support the current Fuji X-T2 as many do NOT. I have to be sure on this. I don't see any specifics mentioned about camera support

The only way to be sure is to try it. They offer a money back guarantee, quote:
*We want you to be 100% satisfied with your Affinity purchase. If you are not satisfied with your product for any reason, you may return it within a 14 day period after receipt of your product to receive a full refund. Please email affinityreturns@serif.com*

https://affinity.store/en-gb/help/

Please do check out some of the video tutorials on raw processing like this one: https://vimeo.com/173026121

There's plenty of scope to maximise the tonal range and highlights recovery, but don't expect a 1:1 translation from, say, a Camera Raw workflow. You can disable the tone curve application, bring the highlights down and apply your own custom tone curve - it's quite powerful. Additionally, you can develop to 32-bit unbounded, meaning you'll never clip highlights or shadows; useful for a non-destructive workflow.

Rich, this is because you're in the Develop persona when you open a raw file, not the Photo persona. You basically develop your raw image first before you go on to do further edits. You have a different set of tools and menu options within each persona.

This video should explain personas: https://vimeo.com/130981861

The Windows intro video also goes through personas: https://vimeo.com/190854361

Hey Jacob, I shoot m4/3 and the lens corrections work fine for me on the macOS version. Are you on Windows? I'll have to check if they're successfully being applied.

I have tested some files in the Windows version but cannot see any problem. Are you referring to problems with the beta version?

It seems so, judging from what I can see on my Mac version.