OntheRez Offline Upload & Sell: On
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Mr Mouse wrote:
Affinity is no more than an additional tool they can use along with Photoshop. Not a Photoshop replacement at all.
Well, one could say that a truck is no replacement for a wagon, just an additional tool. That would be - I guess - a fact. I certainly have no crystal ball, but I'm guessing that Affinity (and there are other slowly rising contenders) is becoming a replacement for Ps at least for many photogs. Yes, many of us have years of "blood, toil, sweat, and tears" invested in Ps. I shudder to think back to how long and how much I've paid for the small mastery I've gained.
Affinity at this point, I think, has at least 85% of Ps 6's functionality, and it is at only version 1.4 - a year old. The interface is cleaner, it certainly seems to be making much more efficient use of the hardware, and it has a coherency that I haven't seen in Ps since about v.2. What it doesn't have is Ps' extraordinary bloat. That piece after piece experience of yet another new function bolted onto the same old wagon. As far as I know, Adobe has never done a serious from the ground up rewrite of Ps to bring its functional core to modern standards. For photographers as opposed to graphic designers, there's just a lot of cruft laying about that seems to get in the way.
Yes, I still use Ps as my principal tool, mostly I think because of sheer intellectual inertia. I'm surprised at how much that weighs in my mind. Yet, I find myself dipping into it more and more and finding that pretty much everything is there. The tools and terminology of photo processing certainly pre-date Adobe, and they're all in Affinity. Also in a truly brilliant more they've crafted their plugin receptacle such that it uses - many if not all - Ps plugins. Rather a neat trick that could save people hundreds of dollars.
Then there's the fact that for $50 you own it. H*** for that amount of dough, I've bought plugins that turned out to be worthless. I'm sure down the road there will be paid updates, I expect that. After all, it does cost time and energy to keep pushing a product towards greatness.
There are excellent video tutorials at affinityserif.com plus a growing set of YouTube efforts. I've not been thru them all, but they have been short, to the point, and helpful. As for the cry of no manual - what, huh! I've been cheated. I can't remember Ps arriving with a manual in wow at least 10-years. In fact. I have half of a long bookshelf with 3rd party books explaining how to deal with the various iterations of Ps.The mysteries, the hidden tricks, the "bet you didn't know that." There's an entire industry out there trying to make Ps useable, apprehendable, functional. That in and of itself is a telling point.
I doubt Affinity Photo will "replace" Ps, but I'm confident that if its programmers stay at on it, Affinity will be a completely viable tool for PHOTOGRAPHERS as opposed to graphic illustrators.
Time will tell, but it's definitely a solid horse to bet on. One thing I will bet the farm on, is that as new photographers begin to learn to actually process their photos (It's amazing how many reasonable competent photographers I've met that don't PP at all), they'll look at the ransom ware of Adobe, its utter complexity and irrationality, and promptly shell out the 50 bucks for an affordable and cleaner solutions. No scripts, well if you've invested in them, you'll likely hang on to the wagon cause that's what you know and if not love at least you've come to know the grumpy beast. "The devil you know is better than the one you don't."
"I'm just saying, just saying" ala Barney Fife
Robert
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