Tag Archives: review

Update: Serif Affinity Designer and other Mac Vector Graphics Programs

GIMP has an exciting new version in quasi-public beta, 2.9 – this version not only has 16bit TIFF export, but the technology they use to place RGB and 8 bit color picker choices onto the 2020 face, nice stuff. But, you’ve really gotta want to go there since you have to build your own or go to some wonderful sites that pre-package some experimental systems, but they obviously can’t keep up with all the important revisions that a well developed beta goes through at the end. 

This article is still a Work In Progress. Links and pictures to put in.

Update: Before getting into the Affinity program, there is a new vector player on the market named Vectr which has the odd consequence of being a download that then interfaces into the web for the power of drawing. The feature set is pretty extensive and exacting, with features like being able to choose where even a line centers…very important when you want to get as exact as crossing lines on a testing slide needs to be.  

Being new though means that a few areas are weak. The color picker allows for picking from a standard wall of colors and using HEX. I found myself craving an old school set of RGB sliders and a white to grey slider. I’m betting this is fairly easy to implement.

On the export side, it offers PNG, JPEG and SVG. As everyone knows, it is 12-bit TIFF that is needed for cinema, and this is missing. All in all though, this is a great tool with a great future being…FREE.  

Affinity Designer has some fabulous drawing features, but this review isn’t about making glorious art images and cartoons. It is about making precision test cards, with single pixel lines, circles and gradients in rectangles, and precisely laid in text. Which the program does, but compared to the precision and ease of Keynote or OmniGraffle it is quite cumbersome. When all the world needs is to match or add to the ease of use of the Keynote, they’ve gone another route. As some reviewers mention, tool boxes close for odd reasons and it takes hours of reading incomplete or outdated documentation to find the ON switch again. Their color pickers will snap to the choosing previous used color, so you are forced to using the Apple color picker. As a neophyte to their nomenclature one expects odd changes, but using command key sequences that one has used for decades shouldn’t swing one into entirely different modes that take literally hours of searching to get out of.

As I type this I am trying to remember which programs were which for difficulty. For many, it is quite difficult to just put in a pixel number for size, then hit tab and put in another number for another dimension. The boxes are too small and the tabbing is unwieldy. If the Affinity Designer Trial hadn’t expired I could check that but Alas. I do remember that there is no manual. They push you to buy the book. There is a lot of videos, which for some generations and those with time to listen in for 5 minutes to get 12 seconds worth of information, maybe it makes sense.

Get around that and the odd positioning boxes, and AD can make some inspiring looking files. Make your colorspace 2020 and toss it to Final Cut…well, just don’t use the Final Cut export choices. Some work, some don’t, both for FCPx and for Motion. It may be a problem with the Apple product not accepting the 16-bit TIFFs, but since the trial period ended before that could be fully tested, we won’t know. They raised the price during the testing period by 25% without notifying the mailing list – “Hey you, potential buyer…we got your name from the form you filled out to download this trial program…the trial is ending so make up your mind or pay 25% more.” Oops! They didn’t say that and so we can not show any of the brilliant or not so interfaces or results.

Perhaps there will be a new version out soon, and perhaps that new version will allow a new trial period. Then we can see if the EXF export that crashed the program is fixed too. Your author wrote the company about these things and got a mundane and robotic response. 

Serif Affinity Designer doesn't want to let the trial end unless a 25% surcharge is paid.     

Update: Serif Affinity Designer and other Mac Vector Graphics Programs

GIMP has an exciting new version in quasi-public beta, 2.9 – this version not only has 16bit TIFF export, but the technology they use to place RGB and 8 bit color picker choices onto the 2020 face, nice stuff. But, you’ve really gotta want to go there since you have to build your own or go to some wonderful sites that pre-package some experimental systems, but they obviously can’t keep up with all the important revisions that a well developed beta goes through at the end. 

This article is still a Work In Progress. Links and pictures to put in.

Update: Before getting into the Affinity program, there is a new vector player on the market named Vectr which has the odd consequence of being a download that then interfaces into the web for the power of drawing. The feature set is pretty extensive and exacting, with features like being able to choose where even a line centers…very important when you want to get as exact as crossing lines on a testing slide needs to be.  

Being new though means that a few areas are weak. The color picker allows for picking from a standard wall of colors and using HEX. I found myself craving an old school set of RGB sliders and a white to grey slider. I’m betting this is fairly easy to implement.

On the export side, it offers PNG, JPEG and SVG. As everyone knows, it is 12-bit TIFF that is needed for cinema, and this is missing. All in all though, this is a great tool with a great future being…FREE.  

Affinity Designer has some fabulous drawing features, but this review isn’t about making glorious art images and cartoons. It is about making precision test cards, with single pixel lines, circles and gradients in rectangles, and precisely laid in text. Which the program does, but compared to the precision and ease of Keynote or OmniGraffle it is quite cumbersome. When all the world needs is to match or add to the ease of use of the Keynote, they’ve gone another route. As some reviewers mention, tool boxes close for odd reasons and it takes hours of reading incomplete or outdated documentation to find the ON switch again. Their color pickers will snap to the choosing previous used color, so you are forced to using the Apple color picker. As a neophyte to their nomenclature one expects odd changes, but using command key sequences that one has used for decades shouldn’t swing one into entirely different modes that take literally hours of searching to get out of.

As I type this I am trying to remember which programs were which for difficulty. For many, it is quite difficult to just put in a pixel number for size, then hit tab and put in another number for another dimension. The boxes are too small and the tabbing is unwieldy. If the Affinity Designer Trial hadn’t expired I could check that but Alas. I do remember that there is no manual. They push you to buy the book. There is a lot of videos, which for some generations and those with time to listen in for 5 minutes to get 12 seconds worth of information, maybe it makes sense.

Get around that and the odd positioning boxes, and AD can make some inspiring looking files. Make your colorspace 2020 and toss it to Final Cut…well, just don’t use the Final Cut export choices. Some work, some don’t, both for FCPx and for Motion. It may be a problem with the Apple product not accepting the 16-bit TIFFs, but since the trial period ended before that could be fully tested, we won’t know. They raised the price during the testing period by 25% without notifying the mailing list – “Hey you, potential buyer…we got your name from the form you filled out to download this trial program…the trial is ending so make up your mind or pay 25% more.” Oops! They didn’t say that and so we can not show any of the brilliant or not so interfaces or results.

Perhaps there will be a new version out soon, and perhaps that new version will allow a new trial period. Then we can see if the EXF export that crashed the program is fixed too. Your author wrote the company about these things and got a mundane and robotic response. 

Serif Affinity Designer doesn't want to let the trial end unless a 25% surcharge is paid.     

[Update] Final Cut Pro X Stories

AppleInsider has new shots, including Motion: AppleInsider | Images claim to show Apple’s Motion 5, Final Cut Pro X

Richard Taylor has an excellent new rundown on Ken Stone’s site: Final Cut Pro X Rundown


FCP X, the next version of Final Cut Pro will be released in June. It was shown at the SuperMeet during NAB. But the version was the same that was shown 6 weeks previous to a limited set of experts.

The following links speak to a number of issues that are interesting and provocative to other experts: What is coming and will it really be the next great thing…or will it be iMovie Plus. (Apple asserts that it will be the next great thing for post-produciton. The big news is that it is 64 bit, 4k media, background rendering, will use all the cores you can throw at it, gets rid of QuickTime as the base code – substituting AVFoundation – and $299.)

Digital Content Producer: FCPX: What It Might Mean

The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping: Larry’s Blog

Terence & Philip Show: Episode 25: NAB and Final Cut Pro X

Phillip Hodgetts: What are my thoughts on Final Cut Pro X? – FilmmakingWebinars.com

Larry Jordan & Michael Kammes on FCPX | 2011 NAB SHOW BUZZ

NAB11 FCP X Sneak Peek at FreshDV

AppleInsider | Apple previews new $299 64-bit Final Cut Pro X to arrive in June

PhotographBay: Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeet – LiveBlog (Updated: Final Cut Pro X Officially Unveiled)

Apple announces Final Cut Pro X | Apple Talk – CNET News

For those of you that missed the FCP X Intro at the SuperMeet | LinkedIn

Bonus: Digital Content Producer: Encoding for the Apple iPad, Part 1

DCinemaTools Editorial

Welcome to the Industry Online news magazine for the Professional Digital Cinema Industry.

Defining DCinema is like defining the Cote d’Azur and the Riviera. Some people say one or the other goes from St. Tropez into parts of Italy, while some people limit them from Cannes to Monaco. 

Our definition of professional DCinema (in addition to David Reisner’s definition)  is whatever is involved in capturing, manipulating and exhibiting image and sound using high end, professional digital technology. Digital has been part of the post-production world for a long time, in the acquisition world on a more limited level and the exhibition side is just leaving its science phase.

Our goal is to bring together the tangential pieces of information from throughout the internet, so that people focused on one area can find nuance and trends from other areas of the community. But because the exhibition end is expecting to have a tech revolution without a lot of tech savvy people, our focus will tend to be at that group. We hope that we are not “All 3D, All the Time”, but we will cover 3D implications.

We will gather items from blogs and newsletters, but we don’t mean to replace them, just direct you to them as appropriate.

Please contact us whenever you have ideas that might help us help the community.

Finally, the disclosure bit: DCinemaTools is part of the DCinemaComplianceGroup, an organization set up to assist exhibitors in fulfilling their requirements of staying compliant with SMPTE and DCI requirements. It is a work in progress, hopefully available Q2 2011, when the SMPTE specs take over. Our project will include projectionist training in the basics as well as maintaining databases of the daily, weekly and monthly inspection reports.