Affinity suite

[John King]

I was intrigued by the programme Affinity as a possible replacement for Adobe although I am not totally convinced - far from it. Anyway I downloaded it last night (I was bored) and at first I liked the look of it but unlike Adobe which I cut my digital teeth on 26 years ago, I find it to be less intuitive and have yet to find a help button explaining how to do some quite simple tasks, such as resizing in inches or centimetres. Apparently it converts RAW files automatically, presumably after you have done some work on the image - but there is no explanation when!

I could be that my mind is programmed with the letters A-D-O-B-E running through it as if it was a stick of rock and after so many years I am in the middle of a mental conflict as to how it works.

I have paid my 1st years annual subscription with 11 months to go so I have a bit of time to learn and make up my mind.

 

[ian barber]

Apparently it converts RAW files automatically, presumably after you have done some work on the image - but there is no explanation when!

At the point you open a RAW file, it is converted to the working space you have allocated under Settings

I find it to be less intuitive and have yet to find a help button explaining how to do some quite simple tasks, such as resizing in inches or centimetres.

Under Document Menu, Setup, Resize you can choose a Unit from the dropdown list

I have paid my 1st years annual subscription with 11 months to go so I have a bit of time to learn and make up my mind.

Don't forget, Affinity is now FREE with no payment required

 

[John King]

Thanks Ian but it is a little bit more involved than that.The cost of Adobe is not the real issue, it is the age of my desktop. There have been 3 recent updates where I have not been able to update because the electrickery inside the case is not compatible with the new features and tools whatever they are using. It is W10 which is the minimum it will work with but the processor inside apparently cannot be updated.

At the moment it is working and does all I want it to at the moment but sometime in the future things will almost certainly stop functioning as they should. which will mean quite a big bill to replace it with a new one, and I doubt very much that it can be upgraded so I am looking at the alternatives.

I have a relatively new laptop which is up to date and will take the adobe updates so I am keeping an eye on what happens next. I wonder if this has a lot to do with AI which I will never knowingly use so I am even more uncertain what to do for the future.

 

[ian barber]

AI has some bearing especially as more companies are trying to integrate it with their systems, Microsoft and it's copilot, Adobe and its Neutal Engine for example. And then there is the GPU requirements for these modern applications which can be another expence if the system is a little outdated.

The Windows 10 was a big blow for many people where MS stated that a certain CPU was required and this TPM security chip also had to be present on the motherboard.

Microsoft is not the olny company to throw this in the air, in the latter part of 2025 I had to surrender my Apple iMac simply because Apple are no longer supporting Intel, not only a new base unit but also a monitor was required.

Upgrading wisely to a new system would most likely see you get at least 7 years maybe 10 using the current software systems

 

[John King]

I have come across a glitch involving Affinity. It is not terminal but could be a nuisance. I went to open a RAW file using my newer laptop with Adobe installed. It was of a landscape I took almost a year ago and instead of Adobe opening the file automatically in RAW, the Affinity front page popped up and it would not let me delete it!

So I closed it all down and started again, but this time opened Adobe first, then went to open the same file and once again Affinity over-rode the command. However this time it allowed me to delete it but I feel that should not have happened! I did what I had to do to resize the image, saved it and closed down Adobe and underneath, Affinity was still open but lurking out of sight. The file I went to open was one stored in an external HD, but that should not make any difference

Perhaps I may have to think again!

About your post immediately before this one, when I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 ( a good few years ago now) it was the free download and surprise surprise it all went very smoothly with no problems what so ever, so it cannot be that far out of date, but who knows what they will throw at us next.

It cannot be all that difficult to make a limited edition of Adobe as it is now leaving out most of the stuff used by the professionals which in fact is what PS is aimed at in the 1st place. I know there is already a limited edition but as far as I can make out does not have the same basic format as the full PS. Am I tilting at windmills with that one?

 

[ian barber]

I went to open a RAW file using my newer laptop with Adobe installed. It was of a landscape I took almost a year ago and instead of Adobe opening the file automatically in RAW, the Affinity front page popped up and it would not let me delete it!

This is because Your default application for your RAW file is set to Affinity.
Just go into the Windows settings, search for Default Apps, locate the file extension (.NEF, .CR2) whatever your Raw extension is and change it to Adobe Photoshop

 

[ian barber]

It cannot be all that difficult to make a limited edition of Adobe as it is now leaving out most of the stuff used by the professionals which in fact is what PS is aimed at in the 1st place

No, it would not be that difficult from a coding point of view but it does not make sense from a business point of view for them.
I am not sure what stuff you have found which they are leaving out which is aimed at professionals.

Just like many of these companies, Affinity (now Canva), Apple, Adobe dont see people as professionals or beginners, everyone is treated as "Digital Creators"

 

[John2]

.................................. It cannot be all that difficult to make a limited edition of Adobe as it is now leaving out most of the stuff used by the professionals which in fact is what PS is aimed at in the 1st place. I know there is already a limited edition but as far as I can make out does not have the same basic format as the full PS. Am I tilting at windmills with that one?

I think that is what Lightroom set out to be but that's got more complicated over time. I have never understood why in designing it, they changed the format which meant that in transitioning from PS to Lightroom, you had to learn a new way of working. Had that not been the case I would have probably opted for lightroom for the reasons you have highlighted.

 

[ian barber]

I think that is what Lightroom set out to be but that's got more complicated over time. I have never understood why in designing it, they changed the format which meant that in transitioning from PS to Lightroom, you had to learn a new way of working. Had that not been the case I would have probably opted for lightroom for the reasons you have highlighted.

One has to remember the initial roadmap. Lightroom was initially thought out as a way to catalog images in such a way they could be retrieved quickly through searching the SQLite database. It then progressed to become a RAW converter which does make sense, why not convert the RAW file on import into a working colour space.

They chose ProPhoto as their colour space, which I can understand and then they started to add additional tools to help with the RAW conversion. Now personally, I dont think all the latest tools are needed in Lightroom, to me its turning it into some form of "bloat" software and it's making people stay inside LR for the entire post processing which to me is not wht it's all about.

I have been using LR since it was released in January 9, 2006 and have seen it "evolve" over time, yes some releases going in the right direction whilst other releases going backwards in my opinion.

Same goes for Photoshop which I first stared using in November 1992. The latest iterations of Photoshop to me are way off track now to what it was originally designed for.

 

[John2]

I agree Ian. A bit like Strictly Come Dancing has evolved from the Saturday night hop. (P.S. I'm putting the barricades up already in anticipation of the responses).

 

[Flack]

I am in the same boat John, after the last two LR updates my 10 year old i7 desktop is now struggling with LR and PS. I am looking to replace my pc, not sure as to go with a Apple pc or Windows. I am used to windows applications so this might sway me that way.

 

[John2]

How Much Memory have you got installed?

 

[ian barber]

How Much Memory have you got installed?

I have 64GB because I am dealing with large 5x4 scans but 32 will be enough for the smaller formats. The more memory you have the less chance you have of using the swap file which could potentially slow things down if using the older spinning hard drives, not so much with the modern SSD drives

Graphic cards is very important with modern graphic based software because they use something called GPU to remove the strain from the main CPU

 

[John King]

On my main desk top computer with Win10 8 gig. My much newer laptop with Win11 16 gig but there are a number of items apart from RAM which will need upgrading. I will do a search for the minimum requirements and post them.

The minimum requirements for Adobe are:-

Windows 10 (64-bit) or newer/macOS, an Intel/AMD/Apple Silicon processor (2GHz+), 8GB RAM, 4GB GPU memory, 20GB disk space, and an SSD for installation, with 16GB+ RAM and a faster GPU strongly recommended for smooth performance

I already have a 500 gig SSD, the graphics card is a recent replacement (4Yrs) The mother board as far as I know the original (Ancient) as for what the other parts are i have no idea

	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	Multicore Intel® , AMD, or WinARM processor
Operating system	Win 11 v24H2, v23H2, Win 10 v22H2, v21H2 LTSC
RAM	8 GB	16 GB or more
AVX	Intel or AMD CPUs having AVX2 support
SSE	Intel or AMD platforms having SSE 4.2 or higher support
Graphics card	GPU with DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0 or later) 1.5 GB of GPU memory GPU newer than 7 years. Keep drivers updated with the latest from manufacturer's website. Adobe does not test with GPUs older than 7 years.	GPU with DirectX 12 support (feature level 12_0 or later) 4 GB of GPU memory for 4k displays and greater
See the Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) card FAQ.
Monitor resolution	1280 x 800 at 100% scaling, or 1920 x 1080 at 150% scaling; 8, 16, and 32-bit color all supported	1920 x 1080 display or higher
Video RAM	1.5 GB	2 GB
Hard disk space	10 GB of available hard disk space	100 GB of available hard disk space Fast internal SSD for app installation Separate internal drive for scratch disks
Internet	Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services†

	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	ARM Processor
Operating system	Windows 10 ARM device running Windows 10 64-bit (version 20H2) or later
RAM	8 GB	16 GB or more
Graphics card	4 GB of GPU memory
All other aspects for ARM are the same as Intel.

 

[John2]

I have always been led to believe that System RAM and the RAM available on your graphics card are the two most important feature on a desk top for PS. The processor and C drive are important but less so. I have 32 GB of Ram installed and the Graphics card has 16GB of dedicated memory available. Those numbers aren't absolute and might be an over kill but I originally arrived at them in eliminating processing delays under W 10. Everything has continued to work smoothly under W11 but I carried out a bottom up rebuild of all the apps once I had transitioned to W11. I think that sometime just overwriting the previous OP when you upgrade can leave you with problems.

 

[ian barber]

if you press the windows search in the taskbar and type system information, you can open the app which shows you your current setup

 

[John King]

I have decided to abandon Affinity, no other reason than I cannot be bothered to learn a whole new system. As for the present desk top I have had a long chat with the chap who built it for me and he thinks it could be upgraded to take Adobe for a whole shedload less than I paid for the laptop with Windows 11. The new graphics card installed about 4 yrs ago is more than the minimum required by adobe and that would be the most expensive item. In the meantime I can use the laptop and transfer information via a memory stick to the laptop if I need to print anything.

 

[Digital Finger]

I have decided to abandon Affinity, no other reason than I cannot be bothered to learn a whole new system. As for the present desk top I have had a long chat with the chap who built it for me and he thinks it could be upgraded to take Adobe for a whole shedload less than I paid for the laptop with Windows 11. The new graphics card installed about 4 yrs ago is more than the minimum required by adobe and that would be the most expensive item. In the meantime I can use the laptop and transfer information via a memory stick to the laptop if I need to print anything.

I bought the original version of Affinity but it turned my Canon 5DsR files green and magenta. I asked tech help for a solution but all they could offer after trying all the usual of checking colour space etc was to wait for v2. the second version of Affinity had the same (random) problem of turning my files magenta and green. I gave up with it even though I persevered for ages really wanting it to work for me as an Adobe replacement

I’ve also tried Nitro etc but like you find the controls of both programs unintuitive and restrictive compared with Lightroom

As Ian mentions you can now doa LOT ( non destructively) in Lightroom). I’ve tried all the alternatives to Adobe and am sorry to say nothing else has anything near as an intuitive of versatile UI.

I found Affinity unreliable and very limited in use

I’ve had to accept that I’ll continue to sub to Lightroom despite despising the subscription model ( not just for photo software) because they simply do have the best software