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Pixelmator + parts of the Affinity suite got me out of their clutches

I haven't used Pixelmator, but currently use Affinity as a replacement for Photoshop for my personal projects. Unfortunately, Affinity isn't yet good enough to replace Photoshop for work.

Are you able to outline how Pixelmator stacks up against Affinity Photo?




I gave up on Affinity Photo after discovering that it degrades images as you edit them. Specifically, it blurs entire layers when you merge them. And it does so over and over, making the base layer worse each time. Therefore you can't trust it with your images. Affinity has refused to fix this, making excuses instead. Example here: https://youtu.be/QA8eVWOLL5I

Affinity is also unwilling to fix glaring UI blunders or omissions. For example, in Designer, people have been asking for a "print/no-print" toggle on layers for years. Everybody else has this. But nope; they have staunchly refused to add it.

So I bought Pixelmator. It's a little clumsy to use in some ways, but the authors have been good about responding to queries about it.


Can you share references for their refusal to fix and their excuses?


Here are a few threads from the forums; there are probably more. The first seems the most extensive. To be fair, I'm not sure if there are employee responses in there or just eager apologists ignoring evidence and blaming other users for the defective behavior:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/53609-merg...

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/185759-sto...

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/166381-see...


The first thread is large, for sure, but is it relevant? Why do all of these have to do with pixel art, which is something you probably should do in a pixel art editor (Aseprite[0] is great, cheap and deserves your support)?

If this is indeed an issue overall it would be very ironic because the Affinity suite of products are (as far as I understand) way more focused on and enable a non-destructive workflow than Photoshop and its related products. I think it's a big "if", though, no offense intended.

0 - https://dacap.itch.io/aseprite


"Pixel art?" They all have to do with photo (bitmap, rather than vector) editing.

I sincerely have no idea what you're talking about.


2 of the 3 threads you posted are specifically related to pixel art.

The first linked thread is by a person who is doing pixel art. “I'm working on pixel art (very small-resolution bitmaps)”

The second thread you linked is also by a person doing pixel art. “I work on pixel art a lot”

This doesn’t take away from the fact that there’s a blurring issue happening that Affinity don’t seem to be able/willing to solve as of yet, just making it clear that you linked to two threads by people doing small bitmapped pixel art, then denied they had anything to do with it.


<crickets>




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