Adobe v Affinity critic

[BananaRepublic]

Two photos, one from Affinity and one from Lightroom. Ok granted its not apples and apples comparison, some of which you can see in the images, but in terms of basics I find I can't just get the same finish out of Affinity, noise, tones, pixel zoom/edit-ability ( Photoshop). The export for print is a bit weird too. Granted most of the things could be chalked up to me.

1 is LR
2 is Affinity

 

[Gary A.]

How much time have you spent working with Lightroom? How much time have you spend working with Affinity?

 

[Ysarex]

Are you starting from a raw file original? Affinity's editing capabilities are competitive.

Joe

 

[BananaRepublic]

I had tried Affinity this time last year but I must admit now that I was trying to make an average photos out of turds ( relatively) and I didn't know how to do that with Affinity were as I did know how to scrap the bottom of the CC barrel.

Straight answer I have been using CC for about 6 years by comparison I have had affinity trial for 4 days and this time I find I can follow the tutorials far better partly because Im so feed up of adobes awful customer service and there liquor store hold up man pricing structure.

I do thing the noise reduction tool isn't as good. I have been working from Raw but I can't get the look Im after, not that the LR version was far better it just a little punchier can you suggest how I might do this.

 

[Ysarex]

I had tried Affinity this time last year but I must admit now that I was trying to make an average photos out of turds ( relatively) and I didn't know how to do that with Affinity were as I did know how to scrap the bottom of the CC barrel.

Straight answer I have been using CC for about 6 years by comparison I have had affinity trial for 4 days and this time I find I can follow the tutorials far better partly because Im so feed up of adobes awful customer service and there liquor store hold up man pricing structure.

I do thing the noise reduction tool isn't as good. I have been working from Raw but I can't get the look Im after, not that the LR version was far better it just a little punchier can you suggest how I might do this.

You LR version is brighter overall (exposure), has more color saturation and more contrast and clarity than the Affinity version.

I grabbed a raw file and did a quick side by side and was able to get them pretty close in terms of color and tone response.

Joe

 

[KmH]

One of the benefits of using Adobe is that the Raw converter used by PsE, LR and Ps are all the same - Adobe Camera Raw.
Each Raw converter uses somewhat different algorithms than those used by any other Raw converter, so direct comparisons cannot be made.

Consider too that LR (ACR) has had 3 different Process Versions.
Lightroom Process Version

 

[BananaRepublic]

Another Affinity version better, ( I think). Ya so the I am having difficulty with the saturation a clarity options after raw conversion. Any way I pretty sure now that I'll be moving over, I still have Lightroom without the develop functions but the catalogue feature with links to online platforms is still working which is good.

I would still like critic on the actual image too. I left the straw at the bottom for two reasons 1 with it gone it reminded me of another sales catalogue photo and 2 removing it caused some continuity issues toward the the left hand side

 

[Ysarex]

Another Affinity version better, ( I think). Ya so the I am having difficulty with the saturation a clarity options after raw conversion. Any way I pretty sure now that I'll be moving over, I still have Lightroom without the develop functions but the catalogue feature with links to online platforms is still working which is good.

I would still like critic on the actual image too. I left the straw at the bottom for two reasons 1 with it gone it reminded me of another sales catalogue photo and 2 removing it caused some continuity issues toward the the left hand side

View attachment 147055

Yes better. I think it could still benefit from a little more brightening and a little more punch in color saturation and contrast. How's this?

As for switching over: I think Affinity is the best replacement for PhotoShop available and would recommend adopting it as an excellent PS replacement. However, and this is a big however Affinity is not a good solution for raw conversion. If you're going to start with raw files and finish with Affinity then I recommend you adopt a different app to handle the raw conversion. This can be one of the free raw converters as there are a couple very good ones (eg. Raw Therapee), but Affinity has a raw problem. Affinity's raw processing module is wholly destructive and does not save the work you do with the raw conversion toolset. As a result, should you want to go back and make a change or correction to what you did with the raw conversion tools you have to start from scratch. It's a serious flaw. Affinity may correct this in a future revision but for now it's a deal breaker for me and a lot of other folks.

I still recommend Affinity as the best PS replacement but do your raw conversion with a tool that saves your work and then proceed in Affinity to process the RGB output file from your raw converter.

Joe

 

[BananaRepublic]

Another Affinity version better, ( I think). Ya so the I am having difficulty with the saturation a clarity options after raw conversion. Any way I pretty sure now that I'll be moving over, I still have Lightroom without the develop functions but the catalogue feature with links to online platforms is still working which is good.

I would still like critic on the actual image too. I left the straw at the bottom for two reasons 1 with it gone it reminded me of another sales catalogue photo and 2 removing it caused some continuity issues toward the the left hand side

View attachment 147055

Yes better. I think it could still benefit from a little more brightening and a little more punch in color saturation and contrast. How's this?

View attachment 147068

As for switching over: I think Affinity is the best replacement for PhotoShop available and would recommend adopting it as an excellent PS replacement. However, and this is a big however Affinity is not a good solution for raw conversion. If you're going to start with raw files and finish with Affinity then I recommend you adopt a different app to handle the raw conversion. This can be one of the free raw converters as there are a couple very good ones (eg. Raw Therapee), but Affinity has a raw problem. Affinity's raw processing module is wholly destructive and does not save the work you do with the raw conversion toolset. As a result, should you want to go back and make a change or correction to what you did with the raw conversion tools you have to start from scratch. It's a serious flaw. Affinity may correct this in a future revision but for now it's a deal breaker for me and a lot of other folks.

I still recommend Affinity as the best PS replacement but do your raw conversion with a tool that saves your work and then proceed in Affinity to process the RGB output file from your raw converter.

Joe

I like that version the green makes the difference plus the clarity/shadow reduction in the cab there the things that I was going for but I can't find the solution. saturation isn't a layer option in photo maybe better selections will help.

I don't know anything about Raw Therapee is it better then Nikons Raw app. I guess this is were the Adobe plays its workflow card but Im only a hobbiest at the end of the day and I can't chalk things up to the cost of doing business.

 

[Tomasko]

As for switching over: I think Affinity is the best replacement for PhotoShop available and would recommend adopting it as an excellent PS replacement. However, and this is a big however Affinity is not a good solution for raw conversion. If you're going to start with raw files and finish with Affinity then I recommend you adopt a different app to handle the raw conversion. This can be one of the free raw converters as there are a couple very good ones (eg. Raw Therapee), but Affinity has a raw problem. Affinity's raw processing module is wholly destructive and does not save the work you do with the raw conversion toolset. As a result, should you want to go back and make a change or correction to what you did with the raw conversion tools you have to start from scratch. It's a serious flaw. Affinity may correct this in a future revision but for now it's a deal breaker for me and a lot of other folks.

I still recommend Affinity as the best PS replacement but do your raw conversion with a tool that saves your work and then proceed in Affinity to process the RGB output file from your raw converter.

Joe

Non destructive develop layer is a planned feature, hopefully to be seen in 1.6. Otherwise it's still a perfectly usable solution for raw conversion, especially if you're using brushes to selectively change parts of the image. Unless you press "Develop" before you're really done with the raw image, you shouldn't have too big problems with it, even though I understand your workflow may be a little different.

The biggest problem for me when using Affinity is that it loads raw files very slowly and occasionally crashes the program when using more complicated operations. Fortunately it can restore almost everything, but it can be a pain anyway.

 

[BananaRepublic]

As for switching over: I think Affinity is the best replacement for PhotoShop available and would recommend adopting it as an excellent PS replacement. However, and this is a big however Affinity is not a good solution for raw conversion. If you're going to start with raw files and finish with Affinity then I recommend you adopt a different app to handle the raw conversion. This can be one of the free raw converters as there are a couple very good ones (eg. Raw Therapee), but Affinity has a raw problem. Affinity's raw processing module is wholly destructive and does not save the work you do with the raw conversion toolset. As a result, should you want to go back and make a change or correction to what you did with the raw conversion tools you have to start from scratch. It's a serious flaw. Affinity may correct this in a future revision but for now it's a deal breaker for me and a lot of other folks.

I still recommend Affinity as the best PS replacement but do your raw conversion with a tool that saves your work and then proceed in Affinity to process the RGB output file from your raw converter.

Joe

Non destructive develop layer is a planned feature, hopefully to be seen in 1.6. Otherwise it's still a perfectly usable solution for raw conversion, especially if you're using brushes to selectively change parts of the image. Unless you press "Develop" before you're really done with the raw image, you shouldn't have too big problems with it, even though I understand your workflow may be a little different.

The biggest problem for me when using Affinity is that it loads raw files very slowly and occasionally crashes the program when using more complicated operations. Fortunately it can restore almost everything, but it can be a pain anyway.

Will 1.6 be a free update is that the deal with Affinity

 

[Tomasko]

@BananaRepublic , as far as I know, we should get free updates until 2.0 . They haven't really specified what price will be for the upgrade to 2.0, but in my opinion even a full price would be a bargain compared to PS/LR.

 

[Ysarex]

As for switching over: I think Affinity is the best replacement for PhotoShop available and would recommend adopting it as an excellent PS replacement. However, and this is a big however Affinity is not a good solution for raw conversion. If you're going to start with raw files and finish with Affinity then I recommend you adopt a different app to handle the raw conversion. This can be one of the free raw converters as there are a couple very good ones (eg. Raw Therapee), but Affinity has a raw problem. Affinity's raw processing module is wholly destructive and does not save the work you do with the raw conversion toolset. As a result, should you want to go back and make a change or correction to what you did with the raw conversion tools you have to start from scratch. It's a serious flaw. Affinity may correct this in a future revision but for now it's a deal breaker for me and a lot of other folks.

I still recommend Affinity as the best PS replacement but do your raw conversion with a tool that saves your work and then proceed in Affinity to process the RGB output file from your raw converter.

Joe

Non destructive develop layer is a planned feature, hopefully to be seen in 1.6.

Please show me where someone from Serif has said so. My contacts with them have not resulted in nearly so hopeful a response. I hope that's the case because right now no one who is seriously interested in processing raw files should consider using Affinity. I understand it's new and I really hope they will address this quickly. If you know of any official announcement that says as much: link please.

Otherwise it's still a perfectly usable solution for raw conversion, especially if you're using brushes to selectively change parts of the image. Unless you press "Develop" before you're really done with the raw image, you shouldn't have too big problems with it, even though I understand your workflow may be a little different.

It's the worst, and I'll go so far as to say an unacceptable and unusable, solution for raw conversion currently available. No other raw converter presently available free or at any cost discards all of your work as a last step in the raw conversion process. Affinity Photo's raw conversion process is 100% forced destructive when you convert a raw file into an RGB image. If at any time in the future you decide you'd like to consider say a WB change reconsider an adjustment you applied during raw conversion all of your work was trashed and you have to start over. No other raw converter does that and I'm not sure any raw converter ever did that. Until Affinity did that I would have laughed and dismissed the very thought as nonsense.

The ideal solution is that all work you do processing a photograph be non-destructive and non-linearly re-editable. Affinity destructively forces the opposite.

The biggest problem for me when using Affinity is that it loads raw files very slowly and occasionally crashes the program when using more complicated operations. Fortunately it can restore almost everything, but it can be a pain anyway.

Yep it's slow.

Joe

 

[Tomasko]

@Ysarex , Affinity Photo feature roadmap

 

[Ysarex]

Another Affinity version better, ( I think). Ya so the I am having difficulty with the saturation a clarity options after raw conversion. Any way I pretty sure now that I'll be moving over, I still have Lightroom without the develop functions but the catalogue feature with links to online platforms is still working which is good.

I would still like critic on the actual image too. I left the straw at the bottom for two reasons 1 with it gone it reminded me of another sales catalogue photo and 2 removing it caused some continuity issues toward the the left hand side

View attachment 147055

Yes better. I think it could still benefit from a little more brightening and a little more punch in color saturation and contrast. How's this?

View attachment 147068

As for switching over: I think Affinity is the best replacement for PhotoShop available and would recommend adopting it as an excellent PS replacement. However, and this is a big however Affinity is not a good solution for raw conversion. If you're going to start with raw files and finish with Affinity then I recommend you adopt a different app to handle the raw conversion. This can be one of the free raw converters as there are a couple very good ones (eg. Raw Therapee), but Affinity has a raw problem. Affinity's raw processing module is wholly destructive and does not save the work you do with the raw conversion toolset. As a result, should you want to go back and make a change or correction to what you did with the raw conversion tools you have to start from scratch. It's a serious flaw. Affinity may correct this in a future revision but for now it's a deal breaker for me and a lot of other folks.

I still recommend Affinity as the best PS replacement but do your raw conversion with a tool that saves your work and then proceed in Affinity to process the RGB output file from your raw converter.

Joe

I like that version the green makes the difference plus the clarity/shadow reduction in the cab there the things that I was going for but I can't find the solution. saturation isn't a layer option in photo maybe better selections will help.

I don't know anything about Raw Therapee is it better then Nikons Raw app. I guess this is were the Adobe plays its workflow card but Im only a hobbiest at the end of the day and I can't chalk things up to the cost of doing business.

I noted Raw Therapee because it's free but there are other solutions. The problem right now is that with Affinity as a follow up you're still left with the old two app solution. That's OK and may be a good solution especially if you are a hobbyist and want to keep the costs under control. The two app solution is where we're coming from and a lot of people remain still very happy with that. The problem with the two app solution involves the ideals of non-destructive and full non-linear editing/re-editing access -- the two app solution throws a wrench into the middle of that ideal.

This is where we've all come from and many of us are still here: 1. We process a raw file with a software app (raw converter) that allows us to output an RGB image file. 2. We open that RGB image file in a second app (image editor like PS) and do additional processing before saving a final image. That process includes the break between apps. Right now many of our solutions are non-destructive or nearly so in each of those two apps but we can't non-destructively cross that break. So if we look at the final image a week later and decide we'd like to see it with a change we could end up doing a lot of the work over. Let's say you want to see the image with a WB change. You're basically negating then all the work done in app two. To make the WB change you have to return to app one and then re-generate the RGB file and re-do all the app two work. OUCH!!

Now you may be the photographer who never needs to re-adjust or re-edit any of your photos and all of your editing decisions are and have always been perfect since you started taking photos and the idea that you would need or want to re-visit a photo and reconsider the editing you did is just silly, but it's also possible that you're like the rest of us. So how do we avoid that OUCH in the paragraph above?

The answer is a single app process. If we can remove the break between apps and then construct the app we are using to be entirely non-destructive and non-linearly re-editable we remove the OUCH. We're not 100% there but in the last decade we've gotten very close and we're certainly better than 90% there. That's the real revolution and promise that we see in apps like LR and Capture One. They start with a raw file and have the feature set that allows us to finish without resorting to the second app -- ouchless.

In thinking about Affinity many interesting questions come up. Affinity is a PhotoShop clone. There was a time when 100% of my photo processing was done using Photoshop. I scanned a film negative and took the scan into Photoshop. When I started processing camera raw files I wound up in the above two app solution. The raw file into ACR or DPP or PN or RT or whatever and then the RGB file into PS for additional processing. I used PS every day of my life. But here I am now in 2017 and I can go weeks at a time and never use PS. Oddly enough I use it when I scan old negatives! I can now contemplate removing PS from my computers and using something lighter weight. Adobe is well aware of this trend and so must be Serif. It's interesting to speculate what the bleep Serif was thinking creating a PS clone instead of an LR clone. And then when I discovered that Affinity is forced destructive for raw conversion I wondered if they were having a psychotic moment there.

I hope Affinity corrects the problem with their raw processing -- I expect they will -- but they're still a throw back to the old two app solution. Right now it's LR and Capture One that best realize the single app "ouchless" solution with some notable fast-on-their-trail competition from of all companies ACDSee and one very notable open source (free) option DarkTable. This is major news: DarkTable has a Windows version up and running and hopefully will add that as a stable offering.

Joe