Apple is for the first time showing a declining PC market share due to Tim Cook's narrow-minded thinking of the company's future and his almost total neglect of desktop computing. However, not all are guilty of such provincial perspectives and Affinity Photo has released a powerful photo editor which is immediately comparable to Photoshop and favorably. (Mac App Store Preview: Affinity Photo)
Photoshop has always been ridiculously expensive and I bought my license back in the early Eighties while I was working at the university so it was at an academic price but, even so, it was about $300 that long ago. Now Adobe has gone to a subscription model for the software so it's impossible to pay it off. Therefore, the interest in alternatives.
Affinity Photo demos their Inpainting Tool in their first tutorial video on Vimeo and it's a spectacular masking tool which permits intelligent clone filling of an extended area. For example, I have a stock photograph someone shot of a single tree in a field. I was curious to whether Affinity Photo could remove it so I used the Inpainting Tool to mask the tree in the image and then, poof, no more tree.
Removal of the tree wasn't a simple cloning of surrounding parts of the image since patterns in clouds were extended through the clone rather than simply repeating them. This goes far beyond any type of copy / paste process. That kind of capability may exist in newer versions of Photoshop but the last one I used was CS3 and it couldn't do it or at least not easily. As you will see from the App Store Preview, Affinity Photo is fifty bucks and there are no cheesy teases for additional software to buy after purchase.
The software is the Rockhouse January Splurge of the Month and testing is revealing a highly-professional product which has many endorsements from Photoshop professionals on the App Store. Some call it a replacement and others a worthy competitor but all appreciate the value in it.
Affinity Photo is largely for professional post-processing of images (i.e. fixing them) but they also make a companion product for vector graphics and that's a professional-quality tool as well but I have never had a high interest in graphics art since photography has been the primary draw.
For an easy way to give dramatic effects to a photograph, there's FX Photo Studio Pro and it's a nice add-on since it's only ten dollars. Some examples follow:
"Flowers for Mystery Lady" for the base image
There's a whole lot of real in this one but it's too much of a muchness and we only need to look at CNN to see nothing is real anyway.
A somewhat jacked version of the image
Photo artists probably use this type of effect too much and the most enigmatic use I have ever seen for the technique was with the girl in the pink coat in "Schindler's List" but we will leave it right there with the visual aspect since we don't want just now to go into the deep emotion of it.
A pleasingly-broken version of the image
Now it's likely of no use to a professional photographer since the color tints are incorrect and it's blasted with lens glare but, for us, this takes out the harshness of the original and makes it more live.
These products are additions to the existing software at the Rockhouse.
Graphic Converter - indispensable as the fastest way to display an image and has excellent strength for basic functions
Pixelmator - quite good for adding text to images in various graphic ways and the best I have for what it does
Affinity Photo and FX Photo Studio Pro are now on that roster as well and the total cost for all of them is about $100 or not much more.
Photoshop has always been ridiculously expensive and I bought my license back in the early Eighties while I was working at the university so it was at an academic price but, even so, it was about $300 that long ago. Now Adobe has gone to a subscription model for the software so it's impossible to pay it off. Therefore, the interest in alternatives.
Affinity Photo demos their Inpainting Tool in their first tutorial video on Vimeo and it's a spectacular masking tool which permits intelligent clone filling of an extended area. For example, I have a stock photograph someone shot of a single tree in a field. I was curious to whether Affinity Photo could remove it so I used the Inpainting Tool to mask the tree in the image and then, poof, no more tree.
Removal of the tree wasn't a simple cloning of surrounding parts of the image since patterns in clouds were extended through the clone rather than simply repeating them. This goes far beyond any type of copy / paste process. That kind of capability may exist in newer versions of Photoshop but the last one I used was CS3 and it couldn't do it or at least not easily. As you will see from the App Store Preview, Affinity Photo is fifty bucks and there are no cheesy teases for additional software to buy after purchase.
The software is the Rockhouse January Splurge of the Month and testing is revealing a highly-professional product which has many endorsements from Photoshop professionals on the App Store. Some call it a replacement and others a worthy competitor but all appreciate the value in it.
Affinity Photo is largely for professional post-processing of images (i.e. fixing them) but they also make a companion product for vector graphics and that's a professional-quality tool as well but I have never had a high interest in graphics art since photography has been the primary draw.
For an easy way to give dramatic effects to a photograph, there's FX Photo Studio Pro and it's a nice add-on since it's only ten dollars. Some examples follow:
"Flowers for Mystery Lady" for the base image
There's a whole lot of real in this one but it's too much of a muchness and we only need to look at CNN to see nothing is real anyway.
A somewhat jacked version of the image
Photo artists probably use this type of effect too much and the most enigmatic use I have ever seen for the technique was with the girl in the pink coat in "Schindler's List" but we will leave it right there with the visual aspect since we don't want just now to go into the deep emotion of it.
A pleasingly-broken version of the image
Now it's likely of no use to a professional photographer since the color tints are incorrect and it's blasted with lens glare but, for us, this takes out the harshness of the original and makes it more live.
These products are additions to the existing software at the Rockhouse.
Graphic Converter - indispensable as the fastest way to display an image and has excellent strength for basic functions
Pixelmator - quite good for adding text to images in various graphic ways and the best I have for what it does
Affinity Photo and FX Photo Studio Pro are now on that roster as well and the total cost for all of them is about $100 or not much more.
5 comments:
Its much like the effect on the pencil drawing on the acetate placed over the various colored cardstock I sent ya (Field of Buttercups). ML
P.S. I had an idea about the galaxy photos you had on your site and superimposing a pic from your News Years Eve video wearing the hat and boa. What I see in my minds eye is pretty spectacular!! maybe you could try it with your photo utilities.
I know it is difficult to get the twinkle from the guitar, but if you clean the crystals with a Q-tip with a solution of alcohol and water being very careful I know they would give off the original twinkle. They were fine quality crystals--(Swarovski Crystals) that I applied to the guitar. I imagine that there is build up of dirt and smoke oover time.
Yes! That's the layering idea used in these kinds of utilities. Although it's powerful I'm not sure you would like the mechanics of doing it since there's no touch to it. For this you try to ignore what your hands are doing so long as they do it right and that makes it nicely mental but the tactile aspect can be a big part. What fun would pottery be if people did it with 3D printers. They seem to love sticking their hands in that gooey mess.
That superimposition is another thing these utilities do well and that's what they call compositing in putting one over another and then keeping only selective parts of A so you can see the combination of A and B. I'm sure you would be instantly dangerous with this software!
The idea of the Q-tip is outstanding as that hadn't occurred to me. Of course you're right since the smoke condenses on everything and makes that nasty sticky layer. I did wax the bodies of guitars at one time but I would not do it with this one because there would be residual left over and that can't happen. Thank you. That's excellent!
Nice article. One nice tool to send tons of pictures to someone is called Binfer. A must have photo sharing software
Thanks and I'm glad it was useful to you
Ordinarily I don't permit links but that one is legitimate although I am not familiar with the software.
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