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
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?
They are tracking the work here and welcome subscribers:
I don’t know… they’re preparing a release soonish I think but I don’t know of a concrete date
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!
@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.
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.
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?
It is true. It’s been tested by folks on the blenderartists forum if my memory serves right. Unless that changed of course, that was around the time of the initial release. I’m not confident on the timing though, I remember it being minutes, but it could be hours, anyway it was a short time. It doesn’t need to stay a mystery either, anyone can try it, provided they’re ready to unplug the internet for enough time, or put Affinity behind a firewall I suppose. I have had a stable enough connection ever since I signed up for starlink, but before ? that would have been a dealbreaker. Companies from the developed world forget that the entire world isn’t always up to their infrastructural standard. It’s also a problem on principle, I think : what are they doing that needs an internet connection ? None of my design programs do this and they work perfectly.
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
What is affinity
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.
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
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.
Something I’ve never experienced, apparently
cool. still won’t use it though, i prefer foss applications whenever possible.
Me either because I don’t use it, but if it’s a win for Linux, I’ll take it.
More options is always good.
i’d use if i still needed photoshop for work.
certainly beats using photoshop or windows/wine.
2027 is the year of the Linux Desktop!
Every year since 1994, where XFree86 provided the first GUI, was the year of the Linux desktop!
Let’s celebrate 33 years of the Linux desktop in 2027! 🥳
Yes, that’s the best way to look at it! :)
Come to think of it, I’ve been using Linux since about 2006. So I guess I’ll celebrate 20 years of Linux on my Desktop :)
i hope the linux desktop won’t end up on a cross in about half a year:)
movie trailer voice In the year… 2027 A.L.
Yes!! I think Microsoft wants the same thing since that’s when support for windows 10 ends.
Good news. I think they might struggle a bit with the ArtCraft stuff in development.
I’d much rather use a paid software that was written by people than a free software that was written by clankers.
You think humans are doing the port? I’d wager it’s Claude doing it.
Yeah, fair enough.
have you checked Adobe subscription prices before writing that comment?
Adobe’s subscription prices aren’t that much if you consider them a business expense. They’re cheaper than an ISP. It’s not the prices that make Adobe shit, it’s the practices.
The fact that this is downvoted is really frustrating, as a software engineer. Expensive software pays the bills for the developers who make it. When that software is for professionals, they generally don’t mind the expense.
The things that make Adobe shitty have nothing to do with how pricey the software is. Adobe has shit business practices, they’re anti-competitive, and they use dark patterns and deceptive, borderline illegal terms to exploit their users. That is why you should hate them.
It would be super great if all software could be free, but then people like me wouldn’t be able to afford rent. If you’ve ever donated to an open source project, kindly disregard this, you are awesome.
Free software need not be gratis
I don’t think that’s relevant here.
I tried ArtCraft and found it completely unusable. There is weird jank everywhere. Brush cursor turning square, weird shenanigans when typing… It looks impressive, but it’s still AI slop.
It’s alpha software, so there are bound to be bugs and weird issues. This is made by a team of developers, so not necessarily slop like someone just prompting “make a Photoshop clone, no mistakes”.
try it again. it’s evolving fast
first time i tried, it was useless. I tried again, 2 weeks later, after chris titus made a video about it and it worked fine.
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.
Oh thank you, finally
Oh damn! I’m game for that!
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.
_
