Jumping ship

[Chris MacDonald]

Hey guys,

 

Our Adobe bill is likely to top £20k this year so we are giving serious consideration to going elsewhere - not because we don't like Adobe, but there are so many alternatives out there that seem to be just as good for a tenth of the price.

 

We are specifically looking at Affinity Photo (and eventually the rest of the affinity suite when it's completed).

 

I just wondered if any of you have any experience with affinity? I saw Bertrand Benoit is a big proponent of it.

 

The reality is that aside from myself and maybe a handful of other users, most people in the office use about 50 pence worth of photoshops capacity to edit photos and that's being generous.

[Speaker]

Have been using Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and CorelDraw for graphics design and architectural illustration work for ~10 years

Went through the trial of both Affinity Photo and Designer. I'd say that they are enough for my daily needs.

 

Tested dozens of low cost and free raster and vector editing apps and have found no better cost/feature/usability ratio product than the one offered by Affinity.

 

If you are very used to the Adobe product look and feel then look for tutorials to make Affinity Photo UI more similar to PS - I can't stand the colourful icons.

 

Hope the price stays the same. Definitely jumping ship.

[Scott Schroeder]

We had some of our Revit team try out Affinity and they ended up liking it. They all said they just needed to get out of the "Photoshop does it this way" mentality. It makes sense to have them on it since they use it for really basic stuff. We also tried Gimp for them, but that wasn't as successful as Affinity.

 

Personally, I wouldn't use it because as far as I know they don't do the live link like Photoshop has. We go through 10 iterations in a day, so we need the ability to quickly refresh new renders into the files.

[James Vella]

Scott - Live link, is this using Smart Objects?

[Scott Schroeder]

It is the place linked function that come out very quietly a few years back. It is a smart object but it also knows when the source image has been updated and will allow you to update that layer with a simple click or all layers all at once, or it will do it automagicaly if your PSD is open and the source image updates.

[James Vella]

Great thanks ill have a look, sounds like a massive time saver

 

Do you have one for Auto Matte updates? I like the fact in AE when you move a matte and its recognized the Red channel it will shift it to the new object with the red channel.

[Simon Moir]

We had some of our Revit team try out Affinity and they ended up liking it. They all said they just needed to get out of the "Photoshop does it this way" mentality. It makes sense to have them on it since they use it for really basic stuff. We also tried Gimp for them, but that wasn't as successful as Affinity.

 

Personally, I wouldn't use it because as far as I know they don't do the live link like Photoshop has. We go through 10 iterations in a day, so we need the ability to quickly refresh new renders into the files.

 

Interesting- my ears prick up whenever you drop one of your tips Scott. I rendered about 20 options for a facade recently, stacked up in a smart layer with adjustments and context above, but I don't like the idea of losing previous versions by overwriting. So do you keep a copy of previously rendered versions (i.e. raw renders) somehow?

[James Vella]

I usually keep the output directory the same and have a copy go into a version folder in the child below eg.

Render

> v01

> v02

> v03

 

This way you can override and you also have a copy for backup, I had to come up with this since Corona seems to write its directory path into the render elements, pain in the bum removing it all the time for each element so I started doing this. Maybe Scott has a better way

[Simon Moir]

Right- so when a render finishes, you save two copies. Makes sense.

[Scott Schroeder]

Interesting- my ears prick up whenever you drop one of your tips Scott. I rendered about 20 options for a facade recently, stacked up in a smart layer with adjustments and context above, but I don't like the idea of losing previous versions by overwriting. So do you keep a copy of previously rendered versions (i.e. raw renders) somehow?

 

We don't keep versions of the raw render unless it is a case by case basis. While we have a good amount of storage, it is limited by a bit older of a server system. That being said, we're refreshing everything at the end of this year but I still don't think we'll save each raw render. We simply have too many projects going. We figure that render time isn't much of an impact so we can re-render as needed.

 

What we do version out is our max files, photoshop files, and final renders. All of those combined is usually less space that one raw render group for all of the elements. If it is minor change, such as move a window, then we just use a new layer in Max. If it is a whole wall move and redesign window pattern, that triggers a version change of the max file.

[James Vella]

Right- so when a render finishes, you save two copies. Makes sense.

 

Correct

[Fr3Drick Law Olmstead]

It is the place linked function that come out very quietly a few years back. It is a smart object but it also knows when the source image has been updated and will allow you to update that layer with a simple click or all layers all at once, or it will do it automagicaly if your PSD is open and the source image updates.

 

We're using video layers to get the benefit of updating the PS files when the source images are updated. We're also still on CS6 so we don't have live links yet. Is there a Load Files Into Stack script that uses live link? It would be too bad having to place all those render passes manually.

[Scott Schroeder]

We're using video layers to get the benefit of updating the PS files when the source images are updated. We're also still on CS6 so we don't have live links yet. Is there a Load Files Into Stack script that uses live link? It would be too bad having to place all those render passes manually.

 

Before CC, I used the CanLinkIt script http://www.wearedead.be/_lab/CanLinkIt/

 

No, not out of the box I don't think CC can load images into the stack that also has them as links. I just set the place linked menu item to mt F10 key and I just need to hit a button a few times. You could also script something, but I haven't gone down that road yet.

[Tommy L]

I havent thought about jumping ship. I dont even know what we spend on Adobe, but I that across their suite of products they cover all bases and that to me is more important.

However, when they broke 32bit Camera Raw, I nearly blew a gasket. They still havent fixed it.