[off-topic] PhotoPrint

[Peter Flynn]

I am persisting this as I don't believe it is off-topic

On 27/04/2023 05:34, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users wrote:
[snip]
> Adobe has become something of a standard for professional companies.
> It doesn't matter to them if this results in absurdly high rental
> costs for them, since they can write something off through taxes or
> otherwise. 

It is a tax-deductible business expense almost everywhere. But the 
overall cost compared with other business costs is too trivial for 
companies even to bother looking at alternatives. Otherwise they would 
be doing so, and they're not.

> Freelance artists and similar professionals gravitate
> towards Affinity. One occasionally hears that Inkscape is used. 

Inkscape is used I believe because its SVG export is very good quality.

> Gimp, Krita and Co. are practically not used at all. The reason for 
> this is that actually FLOSS stuff can and will mess you up, 
> proprietary stuff doesn't.
Not really. Proprietary stuff can mess you up just as badly, and some 
FLOSS systems are spectacularly reliable and bug-free. The difference is 
in how the software maker reacts. The reason GIMP is not used as much is 
the interface. FLOSS doesn't have a marketing team polishing it, nor a 
usability team fixing the errors. Proprietary software can make the same 
mistakes but they get fixed (eventually), whereas the FLOSS interfaces 
are the authors' own work and they understandably don't like them 
criticised.

Read my lips: the interface.

> In summary, if you want to work professionally, stay away from FLOSS
> unless you want to complicate your work unnecessarily, prolong your
> working hours, and annoy unnecessary bugs or design decisions.
> Proprietary solutions sometimes suffer from bugs and bad design
> decisions, too, 

They can be equally bad, and equally hard to get fixed.

> but Affinity listens to its customers [...] The costs
> for Affinity are minimal and there's no monthly fee.

I can't speak to Affinity as I have never used it.

> while FLOSS programmers usually don't care at all about the opinion
> of the users.

Some do, but many are writing for other programmers, not for end users.

> Don't simply believe me, ask freelance artists and similar
> professionals who don't make a lot of money. They will tell you the
> same. You will hear Affinity, Inkscape, but unlikely Gimp.

They don't like GIMP's interface, and also some features present in
proprietary software are absent in FLOSS, because proprietary software
can afford the associated licensing fees and FLOSS cannot.
> Ask professionals who make a lot of money and you likely will hear 
> Adobe.

They just want it to work, first time, every time, out of the box. They 
don't want to compile it, modify it, or have to report bugs. And they 
have enough money to pay for someone else to do that. Sometimes they are 
mistaken, and the software crashes and burns, but to often.

Peter