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Top-level
 🧵 [2/3] My favorite Affinity alternatives are: Photoscape X, a surprisingly versatile image editor. I use this nearly all the time. It's free, and you can support the developer with a useful in-app purchase: @GIMP is getting better and better as time progresses, and will always remain free and open source: @inkscape is a great open source alternative to Affinity Designer: 46 comments
@daniel 👍 Be sure to check out the explainer videos on the PhotoScape X site. It's more complete than you'd expect at first sight, and is full of refinements. The free version has about 90% of all functionality. The very affordable in-app purchase supports the dev and offers some welcome extras. @metin Thanks for the tip! I did and was quite surprised to see that it supports basic 3D objects 😮 I don't mind paying for good software as long as it's a one-time payment. Subscriptions are hard to justify with my sporadic usage. What I really like about Affinity is the use of non-destructible filters, as I do a lot of tweaking during the course of a project. Can Photoscape X do the same? @daniel I'm afraid non-destructive filters are not available in PhotoScape X, it does have a lot of non-destructive layer effects, see the screenshot. @metin Haha, I was going to mention @inkscape in another post, but you beat me to it 😅 Inkscape is really powerful and has cool features that Affinity Designer lacks, like bitmap extrapolation! Here is a YouTube channel that demonstrates this: https://www.youtube.com/@LogosByNick  What would you change in Inkscape's ux if you could change one thing to make it better? @doctormo @eobet I would love more easy editing of PDF documents, such as dragging and dropping a PDF into Inkscape, easily choose if you want the background to be transparent or white, then easily drag and drop a PNG into one of the pages, position it and export the result as a proper PDF again. Last time I tried this, it wasn't intuitive and I switched to Affinity Designer. Oh, sorry about that. Everything you've mentioned should be pretty much like that. Though PDFs either have a background shape or don't. It only makes sense to select one on opening for raster images, rather than vector images. What was the version you were last using? @doctormo I used a reasonably new version, about a few months ago. Don't know the details anymore, but I remember getting the multi-page canvas after importing a PDF, then a dropped PNG got lost under hundreds of vector layers in one of the pages, and I believe adding a white layer to the transparent background also failed because of the layer mess. Maybe auto-grouping of the vector layers of each imported page would help. Oh snaps, stay away from that junk. Thanks for reporting the issue, it does help. Even if resources are prioritised and it takes time to get seen. I'm actually looking forward to the bug accelerator program, we got three people some money to fix some of these issues for 1.4. So some resources are moving towards the biggest needs. @doctormo Looking forward to giving 1.4 a whirl then 😊 Aye, have found snaps to be very hit and miss... I like how they're automatically updated but when the snap doesn't let you access your file system it's all a bit pointless 😅 @metin @gmc @Krita  @metin @Krita Not so convinced by Scribus - the application is nice enough but the last I saw it was producing tables as groups of rectangles. That's almost as awful as the old Quark 3 "text tabs and hand drawn lines" monstrosities I used to be given back in the day. Apologies if they've moved on since I looked. For page layout I'm in non-WSYIWYG mode at the moment with the excellent Typst (https://typst.app), which is a different way of working but you quickly get used to it. Affinity in September 2022... 🙄 #affinity #adobe #canva #software #design #GraphicDesign #art #artwork #illustration #illustrator #designer #publisher #photo That moment you realize you were once interviewed by Affinity, back when they were still a sympathetic Adobe alternative… 🙂 #affinity #adobe #canva #software #design #GraphicDesign #art #artwork #illustration #illustrator #designer #publisher #photo #interview #article #read #reading  @metin@graphics.social I wonder if they are gonna drop the buy option. Or honestly when will they drop the buy option and move to all subscription @metin bugger! I guess I'm going to be using Acorn more extensively in the future and looking for vector and publishing alternatives. I suppose we had a good run, for a while there, at least.  @darrendilieto @metin Have you tried Inkscape and Scribus to see if they do what you need? @gunchleoc @darrendilieto I haven't tried Scribus, but I've worked with @inkscape and it's a very competent vector tool. Have a look at these tutorials for a nice impression: @metin @gunchleoc @inkscape Inkscape is now on my list for when I get a minute for this stuff. 🙂 THANKS! @darrendilieto @metin @inkscape Take a look at this blog for an artproject that was set in Scribus: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article735/the-english-book-printed-project-production-report-1  Really sad to see the once lovely alternative to Adobe's aggressive subscription- and cloud plans probably end up taking the same path after all. @sharpstick I haven't got personal expience with a number of the mentioned tools, but know that Photopea (online), Scribus and Photoline have CMYK support. Photoline's UI / UX is a bit archaic, but it's powerful under the hood: @metin Dammit. I just read about the acquisition. I have the exact same concerns regarding the #Affinity suite - sooner or later it will become subscription-based software. I am currently using Affinity Photo in v2 but might switch to #PixelmatorPro if they install a subscription model. If you are into #macOS, probably give it a go. Will also take a look at PhotoScape X, thanks for the recommendation. 👍🏼 @Shkspr80 Be sure to check out the explainer videos on the PhotoScape X site. It's more complete than you'd expect at first sight, and is full of refinements. The free version has about 90% of all functionality. The very affordable in-app Pro purchase supports the dev and offers some welcome extras. |
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@metin Oh no, I really like Affinity... I hope they don't ruin it completely 😔
I was using Gimp before I bought Affinity Photo, but I don't really like the UI. It feels clunky.
I've never heard of Photoscape, but it looks nice and I'll have to give it a try!