Help support. Please make Affinity possible on Linux!

  • mmmm@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    2 days ago

    I’m a professional graphic designer and I will never EVER support any initiative trying to get privative support into Linux and this kind of shitty mindset from colleagues actually irks me. I will support any initiative trying to improve what we already have. You don’t even need to be a developer nor donate money to help - bug reports and translations are also a thing. That’s how we got to get high quality software like Krita, Inkscape or Blender.

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      2 days ago

      Can I ask your perspective on the comments here saying that Krita and Inkscape just aren’t comparable to their commercial alternatives?

      The reason is… I’m not a professional graphic designer, I have a small consultancy with several staff and work with documents and spreadsheets all day.

      Occasionally I encounter similar threads discussing the difference between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, and the comments are all the same. So many people saying LibreOffice just “isn’t there yet”, or that it might be ok for casual use but not for power users.

      But as someone who uses LibreOffice extensively with a broad feature set I’ve just never encountered something we couldn’t do. Sure we might work around some rough edges occasionally, but the feature set is clearly comparable.

      My strongly held suspicion is that it’s a form of the dunning-kruger effect. People have a lot of experience using software-A so much so that they tend to overlook just how much skill and knowledge they have accumulated with that specific software. Then when they try software-B they misconstrue their lack of knowledge with that specific software as complexity.

      • MrPistachios@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        2 days ago

        Yeah it took me like a year to finally start editing photos on my Linux machine. I was so used to lightroom that I kept bouncing between digikam, darktable, and rawtherapee. I wanted something that just did everything that lightroom did in a way that made senses to what I had learned until I finally just sat through a few youtube videos and decided to use digikam for managing my library and darktable for all my editing. Then seeing posts here on lemmy on people’s workshops helped me a lot

      • sibachian@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        I’ve written a few articles in LibreOffice and the things I need to be able to do just can’t be done in order to follow the structure of the zine I was writing for. It’s a hobby zine and the work is free by everyone so they just reformatted it for me; but it still inconveniences others when things aren’t within a certain expected standard. I do blame microsoft for it though; all office apps uses the same standard except microsoft, unfortunately all the users uses microsoft office…

        and no, krita, inkscape, gimp, etc. can’t replace Affinity. Affinity itself could barely replace Adobe in their first place. but it still has, for many. so it’s not a learning issue. Affinity is more intuitive than Adobe, so in this case Adobe is just outdated.

        but as for the open source, the issue is more than just a lack of features. The UI is at least 15 years out of date.

        Professionally the software just isn’t there; and it’s a real shame too, because I feel very uncomfortable using ANY microsoft products (on principle). But as far as Photoshop goes, there is photopea which is a great free browser based clone. Sadly there is no illustrator or indesign browser based clones that can match the quality of photopea, and the only desktop apps up for the job of matching Adobe is currently the Affinity Suite.

        • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          2 days ago

          It sounds like you’re talking the ability of ms office products to open documents authored by libreoffice.

        • tuhriel@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          Also what a lot of people don’t see ist, that as a company if you are looking for employees, there are a lot of potential workers with adobe experience, much less with affinity (although growing). Not sure how kany you find with professional FOSS tool experience.

          So you do have major onboarding costs for each new employee who has to relearn their workflows

      • mmmm@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        My strongly held suspicion is that it’s a form of the dunning-kruger effect. People have a lot of experience using software-A so much so that they tend to overlook just how much skill and knowledge they have accumulated with that specific software. Then when they try software-B they misconstrue their lack of knowledge with that specific software as complexity.

        You just answered yourself. They’re just tools.

      • cygnus@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        Can I ask your perspective on the comments here saying that Krita and Inkscape just aren’t comparable to their commercial alternatives?

        I am a professional and have been doing this since… Well, I started with Mac OS 7, let’s put it that way. Krita and Inkscape are like using craft scissors to cut sheetmetal. They’re simply the wrong tool for the job. They are maybe 10% comparable to Adobe apps. Affinity apps are probably 60% or 70% comparable. Anybody who says Inkscape is a replacement for Illustrator simply does not use it in any serious professional capacity. It doesn’t even have any means of adding paragraph spacing!

        • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 days ago

          Anybody who says Inkscape is a replacement for Illustrator simply does not use it in any serious professional capacity. It doesn’t even have any means of adding paragraph spacing!

          That’s sort of where I see the issue as well. What proprietary software does is takes the features of a bunch of different pieces of kit and puts them together into one package.

          There isn’t one particular thing that Propietary software does the FOSS software can’t. The problem is that you need multiple different software solutions to do it.

          So while Illustrator offers Paragraph Spacing (for example) Inkscape doesn’t, you get that in Scribus. But Scribus lacks the more advanced pathing vector tools, which Inkscape offers. Meanwhile neither of them have strong photo editing abilities, which GIMP brings to the table, but GIMP can’t really do painting well, which KRITA brings to the table…and so on and so on.

          Every open source alternative does something as good as their proprietary alternaties. But not everything. You have to use a combination in order to match the capability of one adobe product, and that’s just not feasible in a professional environment.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            2 days ago

            Even that isn’t really true. GIMP for example is nowhere near feature parity with Photoshop, not even close. it only just got non-desctructive editing a few months ago, something that Photoshop has had for at least 20 years if not more! The disparity gets much, much worse when you look at filters or tools like content-aware fill.

            • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 days ago

              GIMP for example is nowhere near feature parity with Photoshop

              Yeah. That’s exactly my point…maybe I wasn’t clear.

              The problem is that no one specific FOSS tool has feature parity. To get the same abilities as Photoshop, you have to use a workflow that is a combination of GIMP, Inkscape, Krita and Scribus instead of having it in the one package, which is why Adobe is the industry standard.

              • cygnus@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                2 days ago

                No, what I’m saying is that PS has features that simply do not exist in any of the current FOSS apps. How do you replicate smart objects or content-aware fill? How about sky replacement or the camera RAW filter?

        • geoma@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 days ago

          Have you tried collaborating to the project in some way or other? I think we in this capitalist world are frequently used of being given a solution, usually paid, sometimes for free (at least apparently). IMHO the change of paradigm has to do with first aligning with the ethics we wish for our world and humanity (I doubt anybody besides Adobe shareholders could cherish the idea of a world that using its products contributes to), and then putting all of our will and efforts in supporting the initiatives that make sense to our deep inner wishes for this world. How much are we willing to open ourselves to something like a different workflow if it makes sense with our ethics? The thing is that the paradigm perpetuates itself by us having being familiarized with it since we were kids. (Think Windows or Adobe in schools or Universities, although you could certainly bring this example to other spheres of human endeavours). Kids won’t break it… We need adults that, although have been indoctrinated with the old ways, have enough will power to open these new doors and create new realities for the children of the future.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            I would if I knew anything about programming or UI design, but unfortunately I don’t.

            • geoma@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 day ago

              Yeah, I used to think the same… I dont know much programming (at least not enough to collaborate), but I usually help translating, documenting or answering some forums… Maybe it’s not much but it helps a littlw

        • Mrn1c3n1c3@lemm.eeOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          I fully support this comment. Have been a Graphic Designer since Quark Express truly was the better option to Indesign.

        • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          I have no way to evaluate whether these claims are true. Pretty much verbatim what people say about libreoffice.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            Again, you’re operating off your own limited experience. Ask someone who does Excel programming (yes it’s a thing) if LibreOffice compares. It does not.

            • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 day ago

              Guy, everyone operates off their own limited experience.

              LibreOffice has user defined functions that work just fine. You’re just illustrating my point really.