My wife and I have spent tons of time, effort, and money learning the fine points of Photoshop. We used lots of its many capabilities when optimizing our images for print. We recently have completely switched to Affinity Photo. Right now would be a good time for anyone to try Affinity Photo since there is a 90 day free trail available and also a half price option to buy a license. The 1/2 price is now $25 for a license. There have been free regular updates for years. Eventually they will have a major revision and charge an update fee but so far there have been significant improvements at no cost. Affinity Photo(AP) does much of what Photoshop(PS) does often in a different way. There are pluses and minuses to AP when compared to PS. I think the pluses outweigh the minuses. AP can read PSD files but not layered files with blending modes and similar. AP can also run most PS plugins. It runs on the Mac ,PC, and iPad. There is a learning curve. The tools are similar but the layout and interface are quite different. AP has Graphics and Publishing siblings that it integrates well with, and they have the same sales offer. There are hundreds of free tutorials available

Free 90 day trial
[affinity.serif.com]

50% off
[affinity.serif.com]

A list of tutorials
[forum.affinity.serif.com]

My favorite tutorials on YouTube
[www.youtube.com]

How long did it take to feel as comfortable using AP as you did with PS?

And what are the chances AP going to a subscription based model?

Good post and good questions from Lizabeth. I have all the Affinity apps purchased at holiday/BF prices and then added AP at the start of the Pandemic). Haven't used them at all because I'm committed to Lightroom, and my CS 5.5 suite is still functioning. One day I'll really need to sit down and commit, but for now I'm still content paying for the PS and LR.

I'll have to check out the tutorials. So many good resources for Adobe's apps, so a good understanding is key.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2020 08:53AM by datbeme.

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Lizabeth
How long did it take to feel as comfortable using AP as you did with PS?

And what are the chances AP going to a subscription based model?

Hard to answer. I took about a dozen one on one classes with some of the best at PS over the last 20 years. I have been playing with AP for about a year. I have been all in for the last two months. I guess that I am at about 75% facility right now. Plenty good enough to do the easy stuff.

There has been no indication that they are interested in a subscription model so far.

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pipiens

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Lizabeth
How long did it take to feel as comfortable using AP as you did with PS?

And what are the chances AP going to a subscription based model?

Hard to answer. I took about a dozen one on one classes with some of the best at PS over the last 20 years. I have been playing with AP for about a year. I have been all in for the last two months. I guess that I am at about 75% facility right now. Plenty good enough to do the easy stuff.

There has been no indication that they are interested in a subscription model so far.

Interesting - I plan to noodle around on the website a bit plus the tutorials. Will probably install it and learn it. I need to challenge my brain.

Thanks for this post.

While I’m certainly not a power user of any of Adobe products, I got a lot of value out of learning to do what I needed. For example, years ago I bought Photoshop because a GIF builder application was bundled with Photoshop. I needed to create endless, looped animations out of series of still frames. The animations showed jugglers demonstrating various patterns. The still frames where needed so an illustrator could render a single image into a line drawing. The animations were used to show how to draw in motion lines. Eventually, that program was folded in to Photoshop, itself.

Just this weekend, I downloaded GIMP to see if I could straighten out some scans that came out skewed. A few minutes learning what I needed from GIMP achieved the results I needed.

Since Catalina broke my copies of Adobe CS 5.5., I’m looking to replace Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and InDesign. Affinity may cover much of that.

thanks again, Todd’s non-subscription keyboard

Im no fan of subscriptions -- but its just the way of life.

Cell phones, TV, streaming, hosting, and a million other things we all need to function have a forever monthly charge. Remember needing a pager? or a fax machine? or a fedex account? (thankfully all gone... god that thermal paper sucked. and $500 a month on Fedex was normal, ugh)

Adobe now falls into this category.

Im glad that AP is working for you -- but IMHO, it seems as though with all the time and effort and whatnot you have put into PS -- another $10 a month would be easy to justify?

If you are just a hobbyist, or a small business, I get the Adobe tax is a bit daunting. I pay $80 a month... but theres no way around it -- its just another cost of doing business. Thankfully I dont have to buy thermal fax paper anymore, so costs are offset. =)

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

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jdc
I pay $80 a month... but theres no way around it -- its just another cost of doing business. Thankfully I dont have to buy thermal fax paper anymore, so costs are offset. =)

Out of curiosity, what are you paying $80 for? I pay $50-something for the creative cloud.

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and $500 a month on Fedex was normal, ugh)

when was that? and see, the monthly fees can go away, LOL

Quote
jdc
Im no fan of subscriptions -- but its just the way of life.

Cell phones, TV, streaming, hosting, and a million other things we all need to function have a forever monthly charge. Remember needing a pager? or a fax machine? or a fedex account? (thankfully all gone... god that thermal paper sucked. and $500 a month on Fedex was normal, ugh)

Adobe now falls into this category.

Im glad that AP is working for you -- but IMHO, it seems as though with all the time and effort and whatnot you have put into PS -- another $10 a month would be easy to justify?

If you are just a hobbyist, or a small business, I get the Adobe tax is a bit daunting. I pay $80 a month... but theres no way around it -- its just another cost of doing business. Thankfully I dont have to buy thermal fax paper anymore, so costs are offset. =)

You may well be right. In my case it was not the $. I just think that AP is the better tool now and is progressing faster. The money is insignificant compared to the time I spend working on images. I may well be betting on the wrong horse. It seems like it might be like giving up the real darkroom and switching to digital. I did it when film was still giving better results. Some of my friends never made the switch.

Yeah, I dont even think there is a "wrong" or "right" answer either.

I just know its a part of "costs" now. =)

I pay for the full CC suite plus adobe stock, which is an extra $30. Im probably over paying for the stock images, I dont use many, but when i do its handy to have. Just downloaded 10 images this morning for a project...

All of the 2000s our overnight bills were thru the roof. I had the $4000 color laser in my studio (toner was $1000 per refill), and clients all over the USA wanted proofs... so in overnight they would go. Or need to send 500 MB of files to a printer (pre PDF and fast net days) -- 2 CDs into the overnight bag... and off they go. $25-50 every time.

More and more software has gone subscription -- even ones that IO thought never would -- Suitcase, now $8 a month (silly) -- QuarkXPress now subscription too.

Spend all day in PS? PS/LR for $120 a year/$10 a month/33¢ a day -- in my book, thats a deal.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2020 07:59PM by jdc.