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

[bousozoku]

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.

Have you ever used HitFilm Pro for video and VFX?

 

[fahlman]

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 …

I'm curious, why are you having to restart your computer so often?

 

[GumaRodak]

Software updates if you have lot of apps and i do power off computer as my workflow is like 2days computer off, then computer on etc..

 

[bradman83]

Would you say Affinity completely replaces Photoshop?

It depends entirely on your workflow and needs. Affinity Photo supports some Photoshop plugins, but not all, so you'd want to check with the developer if you have critical plugins that you use regularly. It also doesn't have the same level of integration as what Adobe puts in its own apps, so if you use Lightroom to organize raw photos then the experience of going back and forth between apps won't be nearly as seamless, nor will inserting Illustrator documents into a PS image. On the flip side if you use Apple Photos to manage your raw library the integration is actually tighter than Photoshop since Affinity can act as a plugin for Apple Photos.

As long as you're willing to learn the differences in interface (and there are many) Affinity Photo can replace Photoshop for many user's needs.

 

[vladi]

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.

There are many alternatives for Premiere Pro such as Vegas or Peremiere/After Effects combo alternative such as Resolve and HitFilm

 

[satchmo]

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!

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

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.

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.

Thanks for all the great advice...but I ordered the 8gb.
Not because I don't agree, but because of use case and future plans.

My thinking is to spend as little as possible to get me through 2021 and save up for that bigger 16gb+ purchase in 2022. I've been waiting for the 14" MBP or the 30" iMac. But even if they happen this year, that's still a good 3-4 months away.

So in the interim, the 8gb Mac mini should be enough to dabble in video editing and for print and web projects (no huge 300dpi banner or large document work).

If I could hold off, I would, but the 2010 MBP I'm typing this on is struggling to keep up and fan noise is killing me.

 

[vladi]

My company builds all of its books in Affinity Publisher. It was already lightning fast on an M1 Mac. Just keeps getting better and better.

Unfortunately for us we still can't make the switch, some automated stuff InDesign has is still not present in Publisher.

 

[vladi]

I have been on Affinity Designer, Photo and publisher for a while now, almost 5 years designing all my food packaging in Affinity Designer, and it’s far far better than Adobe illustrator .
Hardly any bugs, and unlike Adobe’s illustrator, they fix few bugs but then they introduce new bugs that they fixed few years before. You need help with Adobe illustrator, it will take longer to find what I need by going to YouTube much faster, their option when you select Help, it takes you to all Adobe apps, and have to sort through. The good thing with Affinity, it’s no subscription, you pay once, $49.

Illustrator is the worst bezier piece of software currently on the market. It's amazing how it ever took off as such. If you have ever worked in Sillhuette, Vectorworks or any other VFX compositing software or even nurbs 3D app such as Solidthinking/Alias/Rhino you probably went trhough revelation in what you can do with a "pen tool".

When it comes to packaging we are still confined to Illustrator because all the leading apps have plugin for illustrator only. Creative Edge iC3D and Esko are all tied to Illustrator.

 

[mook]

Have you ever used HitFilm Pro for video and VFX?

I have not, is it worth checking out?

I do quite heavily rely on AE's scripting and motion graphics functions, that are still pretty good.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

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.

True, but here’s the problem. Affinity Photo can import a PSD or TIFF with the layers. But the way Affinity handled clipped layers and masks by grouping them under a raster layer looks really ugly and unintuitive. Adobe mastered the way masks and clipped layers are used because they invented it and set the standard. Affinity is trying to reinvent the wheel by making the wheel square. They should just mimick Adobe’s way and people would be much happier.

 

[Tagbert]

True, but here’s the problem. Affinity Photo can import a PSD or TIFF with the layers. But the way Affinity handled clipped layers and masks by grouping them under a raster layer looks really ugly and unintuitive. Adobe mastered the way masks and clipped layers are used because they invented it and set the standard. Affinity is trying to reinvent the wheel by making the wheel square. They should just mimick Adobe’s way and people would be much happier.

I've heard that Adobe has patents on some of these things. Perhaps that is the reason? Sorry, I don't do much exchange with Photoshop and so don't run into this much. Obviously if you do this matters a lot and may be a deal breaker.

 

[bousozoku]

I have not, is it worth checking out?

I do quite heavily rely on AE's scripting and motion graphics functions, that are still pretty good.

My needs are light, so it's a bit much for me. You might head to their YouTube channel to see if you like what their software can accomplish.

 

[LogicalApex]

Seems you're confirming my point it's not a drop-in replacement. That's all I'm saying.

Expecting any software to be a drop in replacement of another is ridiculous. I'd bet that Adobe has design and software patents around a large number of its features that would make it impossible for anyone to do it exactly the same way Adobe does it.

You're either being unreasonable or are naive to the way the world works when it comes to software patents.

 

[japanime]

Unfortunately for us we still can't make the switch, some automated stuff InDesign has is still not present in Publisher.

It definitely wasn't an overnight switch for us. We worked with InDesign and Publisher side by side for about a year, which allowed us to learn about and deal with Publisher's shortcomings without having any impact on our day-to-day operations.

Publisher's biggest disappointment for us is its lackluster support for Japanese-language input. But after that year of testing, we had a backup solution in place for J-input, and happily canceled our Adobe subscriptions.

 

[Andregant]

I would love for Serif to be purchased by Apple to bring it into the Apple ecosystem for 100% integration into Mac OS, iPad OS, and iOS. In that perfect world, I'd hope Apple keeps the team and pays them handsomely and treats them with respect. Also in the perfect world, I would hope that Apple's funding would position the Serif team to create a Lightroom replacement and integrate it with Photos app.

Do you guys think Serif selling to Apple would be stupid for Serif?

 

[satchmo]

I would love for Serif to be purchased by Apple to bring it into the Apple ecosystem for 100% integration into Mac OS, iPad OS, and iOS. In that perfect world, I'd hope Apple keeps the team and pays them handsomely and treats them with respect. Also in the perfect world, I would hope that Apple's funding would position the Serif team to create a Lightroom replacement and integrate it with Photos app.

Do you guys think Serif selling to Apple would be stupid for Serif?

Not for Serif, but I think it might be stupid for Apple.

They only need to revive Aperture if they wanted to compete against Lightroom.

And I’m not sure they need or want an illustration and page layout programs in their portfolio. Great for the end user, but little upside for Apple.

While they currently compete with some apps ie. Final Cut and Logic, this might create a more strained relationship between Apple and Adobe. It’s in both company’s interest to work together.

 

[miscend]

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.

With Pixelmator Pro on the App Store they couldn't do update pricing. So if you want to do a paid update for your software you needed to list a separate app on the store. Apple's Logic X for example was the same, there was no upgrade Logic Pro 9 users, they paid full price like everyone else.

Unless you buy the Affinity apps directly from Serif. Its very likely the Affinity v2 apps will be released as separate apps on the App Store.