Affinity Creative Apps Gain Memory Optimization Update Making Some Tasks Up to 10 Times Quicker

[JippaLippa]

I'm forced to be loyal to team Adobe for a variety of compelling reasons (mainly After Effects), but I'm stunned by the growth of the Affinity suite.
It genuinely feels like a real competitor to the Creative Cloud; I actually hope for them to steal a considerable market share from Adobe so that they'd finally be forced to take update seriously and work on what the professionals ask them to, instead of bloating each new release with new features.
After Effects is the emblem of this philosophy...flashy features each new release and we still don't have a full multi-core support...in 2021...
Finally this will be implement later this year

 

[Scotticus]

I use Affinity Photo every day for work, and the other apps in the suite often. Incredible set of software, these guys deserve all the credit in the world for putting a dent in the Adobe machine.

The universe would rejoice if they released a Premiere or After Effects-style studio.

Yup - and for the price it's insane. I got Publisher and Photo for $25 each. Compare that with an Adobe subscription...

 

[VictorTango777]

Questions about application development practices:

Should developers be aware that they have competitors and study competing products, or should they act like they live in a vacuum where other applications don’t exist?

When developers receive requests for features that exist in competing applications (or the same application on a different OS) should they act like they never heard of it?

 

[satchmo]

Looking to pick up a M1 Mac mini.
How does having all three Affinity apps open on an 8gb Mac mini run?
I normally have Adobe AI, PS and sometimes ID open at once.

Budget is kind of tight so if I can avoid 16gb...although I might start to do some video editing.

 

[TSE]

When I move from PC ----> Mac later this year with the release of the M1x / M2 MacBook Pros, I am going to give Affinity suite a spin. I have been an Adobe user for a decade and am now a full-time professional designer, and I am hoping that there aren't too many missing features. I'm excited and optimistic I can drop Adobe altogether, but also ready for accepting that it's "not quite there yet".

 

[snarton]

Photo = Photoshop
Designer = Illustrator
Publisher = InDesign

??? = Lightroom
Please help me, @MacAffinity!

 

[InuNacho]

I'm constantly amazed that the Affinity Suite is actually good performance-wise while my friend's Adobe software seems to be stuck in the performance area of CS3.
I do heavy photo manipulations on 1 GB+ files and its amazing not having to wait eons just to see what one filter change looks like.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Performance is one thing.

Can’t export layered PSD and TIFFs.

Can’t import layered PSDs and TIFFs from Photoshop. The layers come in messed up.

So being in workflows with others who are using Photoshop isn’t possible.

Can’t even Command+Click on the canvas with so many tools. We could do that in the 80s. What are they thinking?

 

[amartinez1660]

I had to use Affinity in a past project, and it's extremely confusing if you're used to Adobe. Everything works just differently enough to cause hick-ups all the times and you totally lose focus. The absolutely worst thing is how shift, cmd and alt do something totally different when resizing things. If you're used to Affinity, it may be nice, but it's certainly not a drop-in replacement for Adobe CC as some claim here (and it's also missing some features).

I agree 100%, there are some hidden things like, having the color picker primary/secondary colors on the left panel a la PS you need to hunt down for a double column tools display (it defaults to single column). Fill layer with primary/secondary is another shortcut, etc… clipping layers (put things on top, use mask of the bottommost one) I always forget.

But hear me out, I think it’s worth going through the paces of their workflows and somewhat tweaked tools… when the hiccups are taken care of it’s a bliss. Also for those starting from scratch it’s a bliss. I did this with Designer (because Illustrator felt alien), and being new regarding vector work, affinity designer kills it… on desktop and on the iPad, it’s amazing. I’ll be continue to watch tutorials for both until I can’t unhook from PS and other Adobe tools… except After Effects, that one is still a solid one to be honest, but maybe one day the Affinity gang can take a serious stab at it.

 

[Vulkan]

The universe would rejoice if they released a Premiere or After Effects-style studio.

Yes, I would rejoice too... I would LOVE A video editing suite from them, although I have survived so far using DaVinci Resolve, which is free and packs a punch.

Looking to pick up a M1 Mac mini.
How does having all three Affinity apps open on an 8gb Mac mini run?
I normally have Adobe AI, PS and sometimes ID open at once.

Budget is kind of tight so if I can avoid 16gb...although I might start to do some video editing.

I have used a MBP M1 with 8gb and I use Photo, Designer and Publisher a lot opening and working on big documents and publications... still haven't felt the M1 chunk on those three... where I felt it slow down, was running DaVinci Resolve which is a bigger and meatier application for editing video.

However, on my MacBook Air M1 w/16gb of ram, it took it like a big boy and spit it out all chewed up. I do a ton of video editing on my Air just to egg on the bigger boys.

So bottom line, if you are going to video edit, go 16gb.

When I move from PC ----> Mac later this year with the release of the M1x / M2 MacBook Pros, I am going to give Affinity suite a spin. I have been an Adobe user for a decade and am now a full-time professional designer, and I am hoping that there aren't too many missing features. I'm excited and optimistic I can drop Adobe altogether, but also ready for accepting that it's "not quite there yet".

I have been using Adobe CS Whatever since Photoshop v1... when adobe went subscription based only, I bowed out. I bought into Affinity, because a) they don't have a sub like Adobe, and b) because F*, Adobe.

It's not that Affinity is not there yet... it's there and its ready, but for somethings you need to learn a new way of doing things, and sometimes the hold habits of doing things the Adobe Way, change drastically.

But in all of this time using Affinity I have never gone back to Adobe... and Creative Suite.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

It's not that Affinity is not there yet... it's there and its ready, but for somethings you need to learn a new way of doing things, and sometimes the hold habits of doing things the Adobe Way, change drastically.

But in all of this time using Affinity I have never gone back to Adobe... and Creative Suite.

I have both. I can’t use Affinity Photo for my main workflow. I have to edit sometimes a 100 product images a day and they have to be online by tomorrow AM otherwise millions of dollars sales are lost. That’s the normal thing across the world. Only Photoshop’s interface, shortcuts, keyboard commands and right click options allow this. With Affinity it will take five days to get one day’s workload done.

I don’t think anyone cares about Adobe’s $10 a month cost when there are many millions of dollars every day at risk If you switch to a cheaper semi-pro app.

 

[GumaRodak]

The apps are great but they suffer from serious issue ragarding loading time of the app. Each time you restart comp the app launch time takes like 30 seconds to start the app. They are not able to fix it as they state that is apple fault. And apple of course dont care …

 

[bousozoku]

Performance is one thing.

Can’t export layered PSD and TIFFs.

Can’t import layered PSDs and TIFFs from Photoshop. The layers come in messed up.

So being in workflows with others who are using Photoshop isn’t possible.

Can’t even Command+Click on the canvas with so many tools. We could do that in the 80s. What are they thinking?

You're comparing a US$60 product to what used to be a US$600 product. What are you thinking?

I'm thinking that some things are going to be different.

 

[Marlon DLTH :)]

I decided to buy Affinity Photo and Designer on my iPad Pro when I saw Photoshop and Illustrator were a joke. Limited apps and still at the same $10 a month subscription.

Maybe on the desktop the Adobe Suite is worth it, but on an iPad I’ll always recommend the Affinity Suite.

 

[Tagbert]

As a Photoshop user would Photo or Designer be more the parallel? I get the impression that Designer is more like Ilustrator.

Others have listed the correspondence to Adobe apps.

One difference that Designer has is that it can open and work on bitmap images as well as the vector files. It contains a subset of the image editing tools that you can find in Affinity Photo.

 

[Tagbert]

When I move from PC ----> Mac later this year with the release of the M1x / M2 MacBook Pros, I am going to give Affinity suite a spin. I have been an Adobe user for a decade and am now a full-time professional designer, and I am hoping that there aren't too many missing features. I'm excited and optimistic I can drop Adobe altogether, but also ready for accepting that it's "not quite there yet".

The Affinity products address most of what the Adobe products due. Much of their interface and processes are modeled after the Adobe ones to be compatible, but there are differences. You might expect a small learning curve, just to switch some reflexes over. Affinity has lots of videos detailing how their features work and that can help. There is a good support site and community as well.

 

[Tagbert]

Performance is one thing.

Can’t export layered PSD and TIFFs.

Can’t import layered PSDs and TIFFs from Photoshop. The layers come in messed up.

So being in workflows with others who are using Photoshop isn’t possible.

Can’t even Command+Click on the canvas with so many tools. We could do that in the 80s. What are they thinking?

The Adobe file formats are complex and often require components that are only available from Adobe. Some, like the Illustrator AI files are undocumented and closed source. Adobe likes to keep their customers locked in.

If you are working in a production environment where you are regularly exchanging files with other Adobe users, it will be easier for you if you use Adobe. If you don't exchange production files very much or if you work on your own, then the Affinity products will likely suite your needs.

 

[bradman83]

Looking to pick up a M1 Mac mini.
How does having all three Affinity apps open on an 8gb Mac mini run?
I normally have Adobe AI, PS and sometimes ID open at once.

Budget is kind of tight so if I can avoid 16gb...although I might start to do some video editing.

If there's a single thing you spend on, make it RAM. You can add more storage to a mini via an external SSD down the line but RAM is forever. Spend the extra $200 and get the 16 GB, you'll be glad you did further down the line.

 

[Tagbert]

If there's a single thing you spend on, make it RAM. You can add more storage to a mini via an external SSD down the line but RAM is forever. Spend the extra $200 and get the 16 GB, you'll be glad you did further down the line.

Agreed. if you are a home user or someone who just does mainly one thing at a time, 8GB would be enough, but if you are doing a lot of multi-tasking or are doing this for work, just get the 16GB. Yes, the memory is fast on M1 and can hide swapping to some extend but that is no substitute for actual RAM.

 

[definitive]

Great set of apps. I just hope that one day down the line they don't end up doing a switch-a-roo like Pixelmator and AirMail did. Pixelmator ended up releasing a completely different app, and not doing anything with the old one, while AirMail switched to a subscription plan out of the blue, and forced hourly popups on the one time purchase customers of the older version of their app, while introducing all kinds of bugs which prevent the app from working correctly.

 

[JippaLippa]

I normally have Adobe AI, PS and sometimes ID open at once.

Budget is kind of tight so if I can avoid 16gb...although I might start to do some video editing.

Spend the extra money but get the 16 GB.
Even if the apps are very well optimised, it's no cakewalk for a computer to keep 3 apps of this caliber open with "just" 8GB of ram, and with time the ram consumption from software in general will increase inevitably.

Even if your budget is tight I'd really suggest going 16GB

 

[carl varley]

Looking to pick up a M1 Mac mini.
How does having all three Affinity apps open on an 8gb Mac mini run?
I normally have Adobe AI, PS and sometimes ID open at once.

Budget is kind of tight so if I can avoid 16gb...although I might start to do some video editing.

I have the base model Mac Mini M1 with 8gb and I would recommend getting 16gb or waiting for models with more ram.

I use mostly use Publisher and Photo together or Photo within Publisher for quick edits like colour balance. I have a regular customer that I design a magazine for and it is quite image heavy using lots of layers and sometimes masks to blend backgrounds. If I have several of these open together there can be a noticeable slowdown and some images can remain low res for quiet some time. This happens whatever render setting I choose, I find that using Open GL still give the best results. Using the Metal render leads to massive writes to swap SSD leading to more lag.

I also have a 2016 15 MacBook Pro 16gb and a 27 inch iMac 2011 32gb. Making edits, planing around the document and importing text and images both of these will perform similar to the Mac Mini M1 8gb. The difference been that the M1 loads 1 document faster, exports and batches files faster, but will load less files together and stay performant.

Hope that helps!

 

[MacBH928]

I use Affinity Photo every day for work, and the other apps in the suite often. Incredible set of software, these guys deserve all the credit in the world for putting a dent in the Adobe machine.

The universe would rejoice if they released a Premiere or After Effects-style studio.

I love a good underdog story, I love it when someone says "that company is too big to compete against" and someone comes along and actually does it.

Would you say Affinity completely replaces Photoshop?

 

[mook]

After Effects and Lightroom are the only two reasons I keep Adobe around, and pay for the whole suite

I cannot wait to dump them and rely completely on Affinity, Figma, FCP and whoever replaces AE.

 

[bousozoku]

I love a good underdog story, I love it when someone says "that company is too big to compete against" and someone comes along and actually does it.

Would you say Affinity completely replaces Photoshop?

The thing is that Serif, the company, has been around since the Atari ST and Amiga days. Their desktop publishing application was good for that time. It's no wonder that their applications are so good for the price.