Hi,
Does anyone have recent experience with the Affinity products? Do they work on Zorin Os? Are they stable?
Thanx,
Tim
This is something a lot of us would like, but there are some workarounds but can be glitchy.
Bear with while I look for a post I made about the same question some time ago.
Here you go:
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Why not use GIMP? Its more then powerful enough for home users, and almost powerful enough for professionals.
I actually have Adobe Literoom on my phone, and it makes editing photo's the easiest its ever been in my life. As such, thats all I use now. Unless I need the 25x optical zoom on my Canon camera, I just use my cellphone.
The problem with made for profit brands like Adobe Photoshop, Affinity, they only work on Windows, they require background processes that don't work on Linux. Made for profit brands, will never support Linux, due to low market share.
Gimp is no match for Affinity Photo or Photoshop ...
I'm with you, as I use Affinity Photo as a small part of my professional work. I would love to see it on Linux, and have added my voice to their forums requesting it. I know there has been progress on getting it to work under WINE, the last I looked it seemed still very buggy and non-trivial to install. It may be worth looking again as that was a year ago now.
I still use Affinity on my Win10 PC. On Zorin I set up a Win10 install in Boxes, where I have Affinity. I can nip in and out easily whenever I need to use it. It was quick and easy to set up. I set up a network in Zorin so i could share files easily into the Windows box.
Also: I spent time learning Krita, which for many edits does a good job. I find the interface much better than GIMP which (as a Photoshop user since V2) I could never get on with. There are good online docs for Krita.
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Thank you Neil for sharing your valuable insights ...
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When I was working as a Vision Support Technician I recommended PaintShop Pro. We used 8 and 9. This can be downloaded from the Internet Archive and runs well under WINE.
Don't be put off by the fact it states German as once installed everything is in English. This was a great program and easier to use than Adobe Illustrator or CCS.
For Vector drawing Inkscape is brilliant. I saved the service some money from purchasing a tactile graphics package that would have cost Ā£200 per machine. I then wrote a manual in a Summer break at home on how to create Tactile Graphics using Inkscape, concentrating on only the commands that would be needed and made a training video for which I used Zorin and uploaded to my Vimeo account to share with the team and other professionals across the country.
For technical diagrams Dia is superb and there are additional templates that can be downloaded such as Chemistry lab equipment but mainly used for Electrical circuit diagrams. The files created use pixbuf which means you have to save/export as .bmp.
Modifying images with speech bubbles for .epub files also needs to use a combination of PaintShop Pro and Inkscape as using speech bubbles in a Text Processor gives incorrect image rendering. I also have created documentation on that too.
I also like MyPaint.
Inkscape is great. I make all my icon themes with it, and best of all is the .svg files which also can be edited via a text editor which makes me convert 1000s of .svg files from eg. one color to another in 3 secs with the terminal and a little script.
I feel that Krita offers many things lacking in GIMP which are needed in a professional tool. To be fair, I don't think GIMP tries to be a Photoshop alternative, it has always been its own thing
-
Non destructive editing layers
Introduction to Layers and Masks ā Krita Manual 5.2.0 documentation -
CMYK (and other colour models)
Color Models ā Krita Manual 5.2.0 documentation -
Much better vector tools - apparently - I haven't used these
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User interface
I'm just suggesting to those people who always suggest using GIMP, that even for image editing Krita is in many ways a better alternative.
That said, I was a Photoshop user for years from V2, until I moved to Affinity). It takes a lot to unlearn that workflow, muscle memory, keyboard shortcuts. Especially when it affects productivity. I am self-employed, time matters. Photoshop and Affinity are superb software with a lot of money and development behind them (and i do not like what Adobe has become).
Some other partial solutions, depending what your needs are, and until we do have Affinity or similar available to us:
- I run Affinity in Gnome Boxes Virtual Win10. Works great.
- Photopea.com is a pretty capable Photoshop clone. Its a website, but all processing is local, your files don't leave your PC.
Downside: 30% of the screen goes to an advert, its $8 / month to remove. But it works pretty well. - Photoshop CS apparently works well in WINE, if you can find a CD on ebay etc. Obviously you don't get the advanced features from current Photoshop.
- (EDIT) I just found Graphite - no idea what it is capable of but it looks interesting!
"Starting life as a vector editor, Graphite is evolving into a generalized, all-in-one graphics toolbox that's built more like a game engine than a conventional creative app. The editor's tools wrap its node graph core, providing user-friendly workflows for vector, raster, animation, and beyond."
Web app is currently live. Linux, Mac, Windows apps promised to be available in 2025...
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Does anyone have experience using WinApps and the Affinity apps?