Canva, new owner of Affinity, just laid off nearly 1/4 of their employees.
It took them so long I no longer care tbh. I got used to inkscape and scribus. Scribus would be the two of those I would stop using first if I do switch back
@mr_MADAFAKA They’re just going to have Claude write the “port” for them aren’t they?
They will. But so will everyone else.
We’re going to win by losing many small battles.
An ai addled mind wrote that. They actually think people use emojis like that
Too little too late. I advocated for a Linux version for years, and now with Krita, Graphite, etc. the need is no more.
Tell me about Graphite. I’m a Krita user.
It aims to be everything (from vector to raster to animation to publishing to compositing and so on), not sure how that ambition will turn out but they seem to have a very good team and are making good progress. It’s node-based, but you can edit stuff using only the familiar layer stack if that’s your thing. Check out the recent livestreams to see how the procedural workflow looks like : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iLiaSGSnPs and their interview on Developer Voices : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUbcwUC5lxA
There’s no raster editing yet, and no painting, cf roadmap https://graphite.art/features/
Wow, looks very cool, just tried the web app, looks very promising. Do you know if or when this will release native on linux?
I use affinity on windows to make photo books as a hobby. Scribus - the only Linux native FOSS alternative I’ve found - is stuck with the typical FOSS issues of a terrible UI, lack of modern snapping or photo importing features, and an overall lack of polish.
Do you know of any affinity alternatives for the layout tools?
No sorry I don’t. Publishing is still one of those areas where open source tools are super lacking. Graphite aims to become a capable publishing tool though, and it’s developing quite fast, so let’s see what comes of it in a year or two. Right now it’s a very capable procedural vector graphics editor. See the “nodevember” livestreams : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iLiaSGSnPs
Sorry I can’t help more.
Much appreciated for the details either way!
I’m excited because I’ve found vector tools for Linux to be really lackluster so far, and end up reaching for Affinity via Wine, and that clunk, for vector work.
Inkscape I know is a darling thing but like, actually using it? It’s an SVG editor at core, and that’s fundamentally different from “vector editing”, because “vector” is a concept, and “SVG” is a rigidly-defined format. In other words, if it’d be a valid vector operation but not supported by SVG, you (often) can’t do it in Inkscape. It also bounds objects with a manipulator that doesn’t follow the object shape/position, but instead the SVG bounding box for that object. So if you have a long box shape and rotate it diagonally, your bounding box is defined by the most distant X/Y coordinates that would fully surround it in a horizontal/vertical box, instead of being the object itself like all other vector editors do. And that shows something I can’t simply fix with a feature request because it’s part of the fundamental design of Inkscape – that’s way bigger than a feature request.
I love Inkscape, but damn you’re not wrong.
As an SVG editor I do like it though.
Where the (might I say) “taint” of slop goes, the slop follows.
After further consideration, I take my statement back and I apologise for judging without knowing. I still keep up my statement with Linux as slop though.
As someone who does photography as a hobby/side hustle I’ll say, though it’s not FOSS, it was a SOLID Adobe Creative Suite replacement. You could actually just buy once and own forever instead of all the other subscription based creative software out there.
Then Canva bought them, said “It’s free!*” and its gone downhill ever since. Luckily I can still use what I bought, because not subscription, but definitely not what it used to be.
I’ve only used it since it went free, and I think it’s great! What’s bad/worse about it now?
you rent it instead of owning
huh? You’re confused, there’s no renting involved.
You do need to be connected to the internet however, otherwise it stops working after a few minutes
This isn’t true. In the FAQ on their download page, they explicitly mention that you only need to be online during initial download and installation, then you are free to be offline, either perpetually or for up to 30 days. Its hard to know which because the wording isn’t consistent across official sources. There are features that won’t work without an internet connection, but they are things that actually require an internet connection like stock photos and their AI. Why do you talk authoritatively about something you don’t know anything about?
if their wording isn’t consistent, wouldn’t that mean nobody can speak with authority?
Surely the tons of people who use the software have more authority on the matter than someone who doesn’t. Besides, you shouldn’t need a trusted authority to tell you that online features require an internet connection.
The wording is clear, Affinity is free, the license is perpetual, but you need to have an internet connection to get updates
Yeah, other than directly contacting Affinity, we won’t know which case is correct. However, the one thing we can say for certain is that the credential refresh timer is not on the scale of minutes. From anecdotes in the official forums, it’s pretty clear that it is at least a 30 day refresh timer, though some people report it never needing to be refreshed
This is genuinely good news for me. I’ve been using Darktable for the last couple of years. This could add a valuable work and production flow.
Hmmmm interesting. If they bring it to Linux I might have a look, people seem to be happy with their tools.
Oh thank you, finally
Awesome, the problem with wine is that it’s laggy and I prefer native.
Uhm, wine is native and some things run better on it.
Affinity through wine runs the Windows version of it not the native version of it.
That’s actually really awesome news. I’ve been using Linux since 2008, and I’ve never seen companies so pressured to have Linux support. Companies that have never given a shit are now seeing missing dollar signs. That’s big.
Oh damn! I’m game for that!
What is affinity
Something I’ve never experienced, apparently
It’s a suite of programs that’s fairly similar to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom (and another one I’m forgetting)
Adobe Illustrator is the other one.
Thanks I always forget about it 😅
Unless I’ve missed something, it’s actually Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, not Lightroom.
Now I’m sad. I would pay money for a good photo editor on Linux. No, Darktable is a sorry excuse, Rawtherapee is something I’m putting up with because it’s free.
Yeah, this is correct.
- InDesign - page layout
- Illustrator - vector design
- Photoshop - raster image editing (but has smart layers that can contain vector shapes)
Source: I was a graphic artist for ages and my first version of Photoshop was 5.0.
I miss Quark
Old school Quark was so barebones. Hated it at first but loved it as my knowledge of it deepened. It was a divisive tool back in the day!
