A massive install (>220 MB) made me suspicious. ....
On my (Win10) PC, the size of Affinity as a program on disk is 954Mb!
A curiosity I noted whilst playing and delving into it a bit.
You can save files to a .afphoto file format which works strangely.
On a (sample) Sigma X3F file of about 4Mp/7Mb, the resultant .afphoto save file turns out to be 69Mb. I initially misread that as 69Kb, thinking it's some kind of sidecar xml type file to store edit data.
BUT(the strange part), on my D800E NEF files, of about 36Mp/80+Mb, the resultant .afphoto save files also result in a 69Mb file size!
AND! .. it get stranger on a puny D70s 6Mp/5Mb NEF file, where the resultant .afphoto save file is 121Mb!
and there's no speed advantage in operating on smaller old files either. D70s raw files took as long to open and as quick for operations as D800 files do.
Not used to that for example in CNX2, where there is a noticeable difference if you open a D70s vs D800 raw file.
I'm curious as to what they add/compress to achieve this file size irrespective of the source file used.
And I also have a couple of Sigma DP Quattro sample images(again I'm just curious) .. and Affinity really has a lot of trouble rendering them with any detail .. much more than ACR/Lr does.
On initial opening at full view (approx 16% view) the images look OK ish and better rendered than ACR/Lr did.
But start zooming in to study pixel level details, and at about 50% the rendering falls into a hole, and beyond that up to 100% pixel zoom .. the devil takes over and it looks like a bad attempt at upscaling to 1000%
Sigma users would probably be best advised to avoid at the raw file level.
Probably the most annoying aspect of it's lack of intuitive workflows is the way you save/develop/move from one tab to another system.
On opening the program you're greeted with nothing other than a blank workspace. A file browser would be ideal here. You're automatically sent into a Photo Persona tab here.
Open a file using the open dialogue, haven't tried jpgs yet tho only raws, and it takes you into the develop persona tab. Up to now, it makes sense.
Problem is when you want to save your work. You can't. It's not obvious how too, but hover your mouse over the Export Persona and it seems obvious .. but it's not.
If you click that Export Persona, it throws a message to save your develop session .. but not how too!
The develop persona tab is highlighted blue, and there's a cancel tab next to it. What you HAVE to do is click the develop tab to save it.
If that's not unituitive, I can't understand what else could be.
They should at least name that blue tab [save develop] or [commit develop] or something similar to sync with their other naming conventions. Once the blue develop tab is clicked, you can then navigate to one of the other tabs offered without fear of losing your work.
It took me 4 tries to finally get some success. From there I then went into the Liquify persona and played a little, click to the Liquify tab to commit it .. and so on.
Once you know this system it's OK, and you get on with it .. but for would be customers which is what this free beta release is really all about .. probably not really a good start to capture them.
I have to say too, I did have some fun liquifying an image so easily .. something I massively struggled with in Ps(when I had it loaded .. never again!)
I don't normally edit photos in this manner, but a couple of times now in recent times I've tried to help out others in editing graphics.
Not too long ago, I spent most of a day trying to edit a PNG file for my sister. She had one designed, and asked if I could tweak it for her.
Had Ps loaded at that stage, so why not. Most frustrating experience ever!
I couldn't figure out how to separate 4 or 5 easily separable elements to tweak each one individually.
Ps, may be a great and powerful program, but it's designers suck massively at making something easy to use.
After many hours not achieving anything, I opened PaintDotNet and had a go with that.
No experience with PDN either, but in a few minutes I had a handle on how to separate the 4 or 5 elements, and in a few more minutes had it tweaked. In an hour, I emailed a few variations to sis, and she had what she wanted.
I have no issues with hard to use programs per se, but at least make the tools available to do their thing easily accessible
zero experience in Ps, PaintDotNet, and Affinity, I rate PaintDotNet the easiest to get results quickly.
Affinity next up, and what appears to have a fair bit more power to do 'stuff'.
Ps = BS!
