Consider Switching from Creative Cloud to Affinity V2

I’d agree with this if you’re expecting to be able to open an old file, make a small change, and export/print it again with no other work.

However, nearly all of my old documents are more the sort of thing that I use as starting points for new versions. I had a full-page race calendar, for instance, that needs to be updated every year. Exporting it to IDML in InDesign, then opening in Affinity Publisher gave me a document where the previous years weren’t perfect, but it was much easier to create a new year’s page from the old data.

Similarly, when I converted my TidBITS banner ad files from Illustrator to Affinity Designer, I had to do a little work to get the various layers I use for different portions of the ad to work right after the initial conversion, but it was much easier than setting things up from scratch.

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Perhaps this would be perfect for a TidBITS article rather than burying it in a discussion thread.

I’ve experimented with various Quartz filter settings over the years but haven’t been able to match what I get from Acrobat Pro’s Save As Reduced Size PDF without any real “work” other than choosing a version for compatibility purposes.

So, yes, please, I’d like to know more.

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I’d be game for publishing such an article!

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Affinity’s applications have their place but as far as I’m concerned, for photographers, nothing* compares to Lightroom for the vast majority of photo editing; and LR comes with PS for a monthly fee in the UK of just under £10 (which includes everything necessary for me to generate a fairly crude web site for showing my photography as well). Those with other needs may differ.

* apart, I’m told by aficionados, from Capture One, but I haven’t managed to love it; and including offerings from Luminar and ON.

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I was in the beta program for Lightroom but have never actually used a production version. At the time of Lightroom’s release I had adopted Aperture which I genuinely loved.

Once Aperture was ‘stolen’ from us by Apple I swapped to CaptureOne. It’s extremely capable but there’s a decent learning curve and there’s times where I get frustrated with it. My intention was to stick with C1 going forward but they’ve just announced a new licensing system which could see me change again. I would miss the DAM functionality - particularly Sessions which is how I work.

I’m not sure if a DAM is in Affinity’s roadmap but if they built a half decent one it would make my decision easy - Affinity DAM and Affinity Suite.

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I have all the Affinity products. RE: the PS/LR combo, unfortunately Affinity has

  1. no DAM
  2. many plugins/scripts/actions/extensions won’t work.

:-(

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The problem I have with Acrobat is that once in a while publishers send me page proofs for an article I’ve written, and I have to mark changes. The Reader version of Acrobat is very clunky, and it’s hard to mark up the proofs digitally. Some editors send me PDFs set to allow more editing, but others don’t – or perhaps I do something that loses the permission to do the extra editing. Lately I have only been getting a few of these a year, so I don’t want to subscribe to Acrobat Pro, and I can’t find any non-subscription edition at Adobe’s site. Does anybody know an alternative that just allows this kind of editing? Sometimes it’s simpler for me to print a copy of the file and mark it up by hand, but that makes it hard for editors who have to try to read my handwriting.

Yes and no. I’ve done way more than my share of producing type and graphics for imagesetters, and I find the Affinity suite frustrating for that purpose. They’ve gotten quite a bit closer in the v.2 suite, but ultimately Serif does not provide the level of control or even previewing that you get with the Adobe tools.

Specifically, they are content to give you all the controls for process color, spot colors, spreading and choking, and overprinting; but then to depend on PDF as the final output from their software. The idea there is you then hand that off to a prepress operator to do separations and plate work. If they know their job, you’ll be fine.

Adobe can print seps right from the software, and I always thought I was gaining something there because I could see what the prepress operator would see.

But when I think about it, it is a useless function for my end of the work, as I don’t make negatives or plates anyway.

A prepress house should be providing a proof on high-stakes work in any case, so I feel like I’m covered there. And the preflighting has been beefed up, though as you say not yet on a par with Adobe.

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I have used an app called ‘PDFKey Pro’ that unlocks all sort of parts of a PDF, like copying, printing, etc. I found it maybe a little on the ‘thief’ or ‘illegal’ side, but very useful. I went through several versions over several years, but have no idea if its still being maintained. I see it is 64 bit so should work in latest Mac OS versions. The version I have is dated Sept 2017, (c) Bitgamma, version 4.3.9.

Gosh Matt, I thought I was the only one that thought this way! Are you by chance left handed? I was kind of in charge of all the Macs for a group at a Gov’t Installation, we had about 8 Mac users in the early 90’s. I had a limited budget, so I used some sort of license sharing program that allowed everyone to have all apps installed although we only had a few licensed versions of some; it let only that many people run that app simultaneously. I don’t think we ever ran into conflicts. We had both FreeHand and Illustrator, and by far FreeHand was more powerful, gave better results, and EASIER to use. I guess the money was just too good for them to sell out (I think the developers are now doing DiskWarrior, at least it’s the same name). But these comments let me know I am not the only ‘retired’ person that can’t justify the Adobe Suite monthly dues due to only occasional use. One program I have seen, I think a database app, only charges you during actual use, seemingly a better subscription model, but the learning time could be expensive. I too never went down the subscription rat hole of expense, especially since I had a fully paid for version already, why rent? I differ, I think, from most here in that as I sit, I have both a Mac IIsi (with a 68040 daughter card), and a G5 tower, at arms reach, both fully functional, so yes I still have a working copy of FreeHand, and typing on a 2015 MBP, the wife unit one room over has a M2 MacAir. My MBP has the SS-HD partitioned, with a small one being Mojave with mostly just the Adobe Suite. That IIsi also has a copy of Full Impact, a spreadsheet program developed by Aston Tate that I thought much better than Excel. It had 3D plotting capabilities that you could rotate (before Excel even had 3D looking 2D plots), I think the first app ever (on Macs or dos/Windoze) to have a ‘ribbon’ or tool bar (all editable), a separate scripting language that was close to Pascal instead of lines of the script being in cells, and a formula format that was readable and concise, like =A&B instead of Excel’s =AND(A,B) (and I think the program fit on a single 1.2 M floppy!)*. Sadly Ashton Tate sold out to Borland, all for the dBase family of products, all other Ashton Tate products were shelved and not sold off to others that wanted to buy them. So with this Affinity family, and Apple bring out FileMaker again at an affordable price, I think there is hope for amateurs, with limited budgets, in this microcomputer world.

*When IBM came out with the IBM PC, using DOS, I thought it set the microcomputer industry back at least 5 years, as there were much better OS’s out there (OS 9 comes to mind, a UNIX clone), how the suits at IBM let some young Gates, with little formal training, do their OS beats the heck out me (I’ve heard the stories, but there must be more to it). This Word and Excel @%^$ team that put much better products on shelves sealed my thinking. I’ve never touched DOS or Windoze unless I actually had to, and only by force (my dead fingers?). As I got use to Macs, in the lab where we had DOS computers, I, one time, accidentally put a space in a file name, and had a heck of time correcting that mistake as no DOS utility would/could ‘see’ the file. I actually had to use a disk editing program to change the 20 hex byte written in the directory sector to an editable/seeable character of the OS. Ever come to think, as the Apple II was out before the IBM PC, why those users never had to worry about Y2K, ever hear of lack of forward thinking at Microsoft?

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Not surprised @ace that the article has such a lively and deep response, image editing applications, perhaps only exceeded by text editors and word processors, are the fundamental applications we first turned to using computers for. The history is long and Adobe won the early wars and pushed what was possible technically, the suite is superb, surpassing most users needs. They are arguably unassailable.

The chink in their armor is the subscription model. That and the formidable nature of the software. Affinity and others (Pixelmator Pro needs a shoutout here, Acorn too) have entered the fray and are stepping up.

I have a work supplied Adobe license but I don’t use it. I am a Capture One user since Aperture days. As a photographer it answers all my needs. I view applications like Photoshop and Affinity Photo as more useful for collage or compositing, graphics or other image-editing needs where a heavier hand is needed. But as a photographer, Capture One manages my files, and edits them superbly. By the way they didn’t change their licensing model, they extended it, you can either subscribe or buy outright and upgrade as before.

I’ve online students and have negotiated College supplied licenses for them to install Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. More than adequate for their needs and frankly I see them taking them up after graduation.

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They’ve changed it in as far as you get no new features without a paid upgrade, only bug fixes. In the past you could get new features which appeared between major releases.
I’m also concerned about there being no upgrade policy with no details on their ‘loyalty’ program until next year. It’s probably the most expensive software I use so I wouldn’t be happy if I have to pay full price every time a new version arrives, In fact it would absolutely mean I don’t upgrade or I move to something else.

  1. New perpetual licenses will include updates with bug fixes until the next version, but new features released after purchase will not be included.
  2. Upgrade pricing will no longer be available and will be replaced with a new loyalty scheme. More details will be announced on February 1, 2023.

I hadn’t seen the loyalty program news, thanks for the heads up.

Can’t see myself switching though.

I have noted with some despair the separate subscription add-on for iPad OS version and the ‘Live’ version which has some free applications. I’ve taken on the iPad one but a tad grumpily, 60 bucks a year.

Go to the All Products page at Adobe.com and it’s Acrobat Pro 2020 that you can buy (“perpetual license”). It’s US$538.80 + tax but should be good for many years (I’m still using Acrobat Pro XI from 2013).

Yeah, I’ve been fascinated to hear all the different perspectives, which reinforces my belief that I was right to avoid trying to review the Affinity apps in any formal way—it’s just impossible to guess what’s important to any given person. And we all have to remember that our must-have feature is likely completely irrelevant to many others.

I’m just happy that Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer can do everything I want to so I don’t have to spend $650 per year on Creative Cloud.

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Thanks, but that’s very pricey for a product that I might use maybe half a dozen times a year for an hour at a time.

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When Designer was first released, importing IDML was problematic. However, when I ordered my Mac Studio, I saved off all my ID files as IDML. I haven’t tested all of them (many probably will never be needed again), but those I have used have had very few issues, all minor. The most common issue is non-printing, invisible objects, that occasionally get in the way.

ColorSync Utility (CSU) is a curious little app. It has been fundamental to the Mac’s colour management for so many years and yet is so arcane, essentially because Apple has never actually explained everything it does, but trial and error will do for this.
(DuckDuck - ColorSync Utility User Guide - and it will walk you through various processes).

I used it 12, maybe 15 years ago to reduce PDF file sizes for emailing. But really, if you don’t need the big file sizes, then they can mount up pretty fast if you use a lot of PDFs, so it’s worth the time generally IMHO.

The crux for CSU is to make Custom Filters. If you don’t do this, it’ll probably never work for you. The Builtin Filters are really just examples, to help you make your own. N.B. You can go pretty deep into PDFs for repro.

In CSU select Filters, then…
1/ Add a Custom Filter and give it a name
2/ Configure / Add Image Effects Component / Image Compression - jpeg

I have 3 Custom Filters for this. Large/Med/Small, which covers all I need really.

3/ Create an Automator Workflow - Service. Workflow receives current - PDF files
4/ Add the action - Apply Quartz Filter to PDF Documents
5/ Select your Custom Filter from the drop-down

This Automator Service will now show up via the Contextual Menu when you select a PDF in the Finder. You can add apps for it to also show up in, although I’ve found this be a bit quirky in the past.

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When Apple released ColorSync to the world it was a universe changer, not just a game changer. Developing, setting up, managing and using color profiles was something that was universally assumed that desktop computers could never ever, ever, ever manage to do.

If you worked in the print publishing industry it was, and still is, manna from heaven. I was at a Seybold conference when ColorSync had just been introduced, color profiling, and especially ICC Color Profiles. This was something that took years for Windows to develop technology advanced enough that could run an equivalent version, which to date is still considered more problematic and difficult than ColorSync.

Those were the days, long ago in the past, when Apple and Adobe were still joined at the hip. ColorSync was just one example of what was then a marriage made in heaven.

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Yes, and the export capabilities in Designer are identical to those in Photo and Publisher—they share the code rather than reinventing it for each separate app. I have to grab a stock photo once a week, correct it for my application, and then export it in two different sizes in two different formats. What I do not have to do is remember how exporting in Photo is different from exporting in Designer (which I use for large-format banners, for example)—the options are exactly the same and they work exactly the same.

The last time I did this in Illustrator it reminded me of Mac System 7.5. Anybody’s guess as to whether I was going to get what I wanted, and I used to do this professionally.

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