Affinity vs Lightroom? Black Friday temptation!

[hepcat]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

2 hours ago, jaapv said:

I’m used to it. Professional software is often by subscription. BTW the C1 subscription is about 40$ a month, nearly three times Adobe. 

I used LR 5.7 for years before they switched to the subscription model.   I used the "free" version of C1 that came with my Leaf Credo back for six or seven years.  It was only when LR 5.7 no longer had support for my next "new" camera (the Panasonic S1) that I bit the bullet and bought C1.   I've upgraded it once over the years, but it'll be a lot of years again now before I upgrade it again.  As far as feature set, I'd still be happy with LR 5.7 if they'd just continued updating their Camera Raw database for it.

I think I paid about $150 for C1 when I bought it the first time, and about that for the upgrade.

[jaapv]

Yes, I have a free version of C1 Pro about three years old but as I never use it I have not upgraded. No idea which camera it came with. 

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[dpitt]

12 hours ago, jaapv said:

Unfortunately Windows only, so not usable by the majority of our members.

If you are looking for a good free DAM, I can recommend the free Digikam. It has build in Raw processing and editing, but that is not very impressive.
The DAM area is very good IMO, and available on Linux/Mac/Windows. The UI is not as streamlined as from commercial software, but if has an impressive feature set. And because it is database driven, it stays very fast, even with 100K+ images on online/offline storage.

I use it to manage, keyword, search my archive and it can be set up to work together with any processing software and lots of image web sites.

Edited November 27, 2023 by dpitt

[luetz]

On 11/27/2023 at 2:08 AM, jaapv said:

Maybe, but I find the Adobe subscription model ideal. It saves me money by not having to buy expensive updates every year and keeps my software up to date on a continuous basis. 

Exactly the same reasons I subscribe to LrClassic.  Always current, included add-ons (Photo Shop/Bridge etc), not having to re-learn different software, all for the price of a couple of Starbucks @ Month.

[250swb]

2 hours ago, luetz said:

Exactly the same reasons I subscribe to LrClassic.  Always current, included add-ons (Photo Shop/Bridge etc), not having to re-learn different software, all for the price of a couple of Starbucks @ Month.

Simply put 👍

But in the end you can't argue against the buying of a £5500 camera and then adopting the staunch aim to penny pinch on the software. I'd say it was unbelievable until you realise some would rather spend far, far more on either a camera strap, a fashionable bag, or a soft-release rather than the price of a yearly Adobe subscription. Where do priorities lie, I don't know but I thought I just saw them going down the drain.

[jaapv]

That is not quite true. Adobe improves the algorithms of the basic functions all the time as well. 
I need my editor on my laptop and on my desktop so C1 would cost 358$ a year or 478$ right out 

 

On 11/27/2023 at 2:00 PM, Anbaric said:

I think the standard Capture One Pro subscription is $15 USD (or £15 GBP) a month, but down to $7.50/£7.50 today with the Black Friday deal. The 'perpetual' licence is also 50% off, so $150/£150 today. Capture One are heavily pushing the subscription by making the perpetual less attractive, though, with more limited updates than they used to provide.

For people who used to buy every version of a particular product and need (or enjoy) the latest updates, I guess a subscription can make sense, but for those of us who just use the core feature set it looks very much like you are paying again and again for more or less the same thing. We used to use Adobe CS sporadically at work for boring things like preparing technical illustrations, and had good academic pricing for collections like Design Standard (PS, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro). None of this requires AI sky replacement, content-aware fill or really anything more recent than we had in CS3 (in fact, heavy image manipulation would be malpractice in our field). Now Adobe wants about the same for one year of this selection of packages as we used to pay for a 'perpetual' licence we might use for 5 years or longer, and they are denying access to all but the most recent versions of CS by switching off the activation servers for software their customers may have paid thousands for. Eventually CS6 will go the same way, and it will be CC or nothing for any new installation. Adobe can get away with this because they have a near monopoly in professional image editing (less so in raw conversion, etc.). While packages like Affinity have powerful professional features, people who are paid money to edit every day want to use the industry standard software they are used to, so Adobe can continue to milk this cash cow indefinitely.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[marchyman]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

That chart looks like it assumes you always pay full price for upgrades.   Before C1 changed things you could usually update the end of the year for about 1/2 price -- providing you were willing to pay for unknown features as C1 didn't tell you what the new release was going to contain.  Even then, it was more expensive than the Adobe photographers package.  But it also had  some nice features that Adobe didn't.  Adobe's feature set has improved and its DAM functions always blew C1 away.  I switched back to LrC two years ago and haven't felt a need to use C1 on an image in over 12 months.  

[Jeff S]

Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for 10 bucks a month.  Maybe the best bang for the buck than any of my other photography related expenses (except maybe ImagePrint).  No more than I used to pay for upgrades (without the hassle), far less than I used to pay for darkroom supplies, and keeps improving every year without additional cost.

Jeff

Edited November 30, 2023 by Jeff S

[Denebola]

After having used both PS and Lr, tried extensively C1 (all used inmy workplace), at the end, for personal use,  I switched to  Affinity Photo (which does the same thing as PS, for some use even more advanced) and Imatch Photools (by far light years ahead than Lr). Both keeps updated every 4-5 years (in the meantime they are both continuosly updated, of course), and there is a substantial reduction cost for upgrade. Price? AP V2 about 87$  (50$ with these days Black Friday), 129$ for Imatch (which, unluckily, run on Windows only).

With a very interesting price I have a complete and powerful set of programs which covers any need at a bargain price compared to any other alternative.

Den

[convexferret]

Given that the OP is using Apple Photos currently then Affinity Photo is an ideal solution. You can use Apple Photos as your DAM and then when you hit edit you'll find "Edit in Affinity Photo" in the ... menu. Works great. This is how I work now as I've moved away from too many unnecessary tools (others can argue).

[Anbaric]

21 hours ago, jaapv said:

That is not quite true. Adobe improves the algorithms of the basic functions all the time as well. 
I need my editor on my laptop and on my desktop so C1 would cost 358$ a year or 478$ right out

Although the standard C1 Pro licence is described as a 'single-user' licence, that just means they intend it to be used by one person on one computer at a time. You can actually install it on 3 computers, but they don't want (say) another family member using the laptop while you are using the desktop.

[hansvons]

On 11/26/2023 at 9:58 PM, hepcat said:

Capture One isn't "cheap" but it's a full bodied and full featured image management package that I've come to like far better than Lightroom.

Precisely. And with the new AI-based masking tool, it's pretty cutting-edge.

[Anbaric]

On 11/28/2023 at 10:19 PM, 250swb said:

Simply put 👍

But in the end you can't argue against the buying of a £5500 camera and then adopting the staunch aim to penny pinch on the software. I'd say it was unbelievable until you realise some would rather spend far, far more on either a camera strap, a fashionable bag, or a soft-release rather than the price of a yearly Adobe subscription. Where do priorities lie, I don't know but I thought I just saw them going down the drain.

But everyone is different. Imagine you bought that £5300 Q3, or perhaps a £2000 secondhand M240, and kept it for ten years (even in the digital age, many people keep their Leicas for an extended period). In the past, when you could buy a 'perpetual' copy of Lightroom, you might have spent around £100 on software initially, and maybe the same again five years later if you wanted some particularly compelling feature, or you needed raw support for another camera. That means you would have given Adobe perhaps 5-10% of the cost of your camera. Today, with one of the cheapest CC subscriptions, you'd be spending nearly a quarter of the price of the Q3, or more than half the price of the M240. You'd get PS or a cloud storage package too, which you may or may not want.

To a photographer who used to buy every update of LR and especially PS and wants to use all the tools in the box, renting the software may make perfect sense. They are probably saving money. But is one who updated infrequently and just wants to develop their raw files, tweak colour and contrast, straighten and crop, maybe apply a curve, really getting good value? They could buy Elements, of course, which is a perfectly decent package, but then they might find that Adobe has left out some key feature (like colour channels in the Curves dialogue) to nudge customers towards a subscription. This is a niche where packages like Affinity can really shine, because they have no reason not to make their product as good as they know how. I bought Affinity Photo v1 in (I think) 2016, got nearly 6 years of updates until v2 was launched last year at a very reasonable price, and it does everything I need from an image editor (some things better than Photoshop).

A £10 rental may not seem like much, but we have now reached a point where everyone wants to charge subscriptions, whether it's for an office suite or a VR fitness program or 'free' mail order deliveries or some trivial phone app, and they all add up. You get updates, of course (relevant to you or not), and often some additional 'content' you may or may not care about, but the reason this is such a popular business model is that the companies make much more money. This is why Adobe is now worth the best part of $300 billion USD, has revenue of nearly $20 billion a year, and no longer sells 'perpetual' licences for their major products (while effectively refusing to honour earlier licences by not providing activation - 'perpetual', it seems, means a decade or so in Adobe language).

[Jeff S]

1 hour ago, Anbaric said:

Today, with one of the cheapest CC subscriptions, you'd be spending nearly a quarter of the price of the Q3, or more than half the price of the M240. You'd get PS or a cloud storage package too, which you may or may not want.

 

Not clear on your math.  I spend roughly $10 a month ($120/year), which includes continually updated full versions of both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I do not use any cloud storage (optional add-on; not mandated), which maintains my former desktop-based system.  All the hassle of upgrades, even minor ones that might include an added profile for a new camera or lens, are automatically provided. 
 

For me, it’s cheap, and a “no-brainer.”  But I agree…everyone is different.

Jeff

Edited November 30, 2023 by Jeff S

[zeitz]

1 hour ago, Anbaric said:

In the past, when you could buy a 'perpetual' copy of Lightroom, you might have spent around £100 on software initially,

Back in the day, a copy of Photoshop cost about $650.  That was about 15 years ago.  That price did not include updates.  I pay my $9.99 per month and don't even think twice about it.

[Anbaric]

50 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

Not clear on your math.  I spend roughly $10 a month ($120/year), which includes continually updated full versions of both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I do not use any cloud storage (optional add-on; not mandated), which maintains my former desktop-based system.  All the hassle of upgrades, even minor ones that might include an added profile for a new camera or lens, are automatically provided.

There are two cheap rental plans that include LR - one with PS (and both versions of LR) but only a neglible amount of cloud storage, the other with 1TB of cloud storage and only the cloudy version of LR. Both cost about the same, about £10 a month where I live. There is no cheaper 'LR-only' plan directly equivalent to the old LR Classic 'perpetual' licence - you must have either PS or cloud storage (or both if you pay extra).

While PS has never been cheap, especially if you updated it regularly, LR Classic used to be - the 'perpetual' licence was about £100 on Amazon UK (equivalent to 10 months of the cheapest CC plans) and sometimes on offer for about £70. If Adobe had kept providing and updating LR under the old business model, I suspect it would have remained popular - anyone who also wanted a more advanced pixel editor could add Affinity for a one-off payment (£68 when sold at full price, but currently £40.49 - it's discounted quite often). During the lifetime of a major version of Affinity, updates are only a click away, and free of charge.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Anbaric

[marchyman]

4 minutes ago, Anbaric said:

you must have either PS...

Nit picking time: You must pay about 9.99/month.  You do not need to download or use PS.  I don't have PS on my system.  I find LrC alone worth what I pay. I have other apps to use when LrC isn't enough.

[Jeff S]

5 minutes ago, Anbaric said:

There are two cheap rental plans that include LR - one with PS (and both versions of LR) but only a neglible amount of cloud storage, the other with 1TB of cloud storage and only the cloudy version of LR. Both cost about the same, about £10 a month where I live. There is no cheaper 'LR-only' plan directly equivalent to the old LR Classic 'perpetual' licence - you must have either PS or cloud storage (or both if you pay extra).

While PS has never been cheap, especially if you updated it regularly, LR Classic used to be - the 'perpetual' licence was about £100 on Amazon UK (equivalent to 10 months of the cheapest CC plans) and sometimes on offer for about £70. If Adobe had kept providing and updating LR under the old business model, I suspect it would have remained popular - anyone who also wanted a more advanced pixel editor could add Affinity for a one-off payment (£68 when sold at full price, but currently £40.49 - it's discounted quite often). During the lifetime of a major version of Affinity, updates are only a click away, and free of charge.

I’m aware of plan options.  Still, your cost comparisons with Q3 and M240 make no sense to me. Regardless, I’m saving $ compared to the ‘old days’ and the product is significantly better as well as far easier to manage. I use what I need and ignore the rest.
 

More importantly, I can now make prints from my old M8.2 files that are better than I made using my older software.  Priceless. 
 

Jeff

[Anbaric]

5 minutes ago, marchyman said:

Nit picking time: You must pay about 9.99/month.  You do not need to download or use PS.  I don't have PS on my system.  I find LrC alone worth what I pay. I have other apps to use when LrC isn't enough.

Well yes, of course. But you are now paying more for an annual rental than you would have paid for a purchase under the old system (or let's say you are paying about the same, allowing for price increases). That's also true for our use at work, where we used to buy a 'perpetual' licence for CS Design Standard for about the same price as we would now pay to rent the same packages (and some we don't need) for a year (academic pricing for both CS and CC).

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[Anbaric]

32 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

I’m aware of plan options.  Still, your cost comparisons with Q3 and M240 make no sense to me. Regardless, I’m saving $ compared to the ‘old days’ and the product is significantly better as well as far easier to manage. I use what I need and ignore the rest.

It all depends on your pattern of use and upgrades. Some people chose not to buy every upgrade, or even every other upgrade, and Adobe were making much less money from them. The expense per annum was pretty low if they were LR-only users, because the purchase price was very reasonable. I used 5 years between upgrades as an example, because that's pretty much what we did at work with CS (upgrading CS when we upgraded the computer), and I'm sure there were many LR users who didn't bother getting the new version until they bought an incompatible camera. Now of course they have no choice, and must pay £600 rather than £100 to use LR for that period. Yes, they'll be getting more for their money, but Adobe isn't giving them the option to spend less if they don't need the upgrades or the extra software or the cloud storage.

This is really what makes the competition from companies like ON1 and DxO attractive to some - there is no ongoing commitment to Adobe for the rest of your photographic life (along with every other subscription) and you can purchase a 'perpetual' licence for something like the price of an annual Adobe plan. Capture One customers are rather more likely to be professionals, the purchase price is higher, and they are pushing subscriptions (while continuing to offer purchases). But even with C1 you can get a Black Friday purchase deal in more or less the same price range as a standard Adobe subscription. And C1 does particularly good raw conversions, which back in the day I found superior to Adobe's.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Anbaric